The first Diamond Rush in the Kimberley district took place in 1869 when diamonds were found in the walls of a house, and by 1873 the town had become home to 50,000 miners. Famed for its “Big Hole” – an enormous open diamond mine – Kimberly today has an attractive historic centre with an interesting collection of museums and galleries.
t Kimberley’s famous Big Hole, once an important diamond mine
EXPERIENCE The Arid Northwest
n Double-tap image to read the labels
Kimberley Mine, or the Big Hole, as it is known, is the only one of four diamond mines in the Kimberley area that is still open. Within two years of the discovery of diamond-bearing kimberlite pipes in 1871, the mining claims were being worked by up to 30,000 miners at a time. With little more than picks and shovels to aid them, the miners dug deep into the earth, and by 1889, the hole had reached an astounding depth of 150 m (488 ft). The deeper the miners delved, the more difficult it became to extract the diamond-bearing soil, and the chaotic arrangement of cables, precipitous paths and claims lying at varying heights encouraged the miners to form syndicates. These groupings were later acquired by Cecil John Rhodes.
Centred around the Big Hole, the Kimberley Mine Museum tells South Africa’s diamond-mining history through several elements. The Old Mining Village consists of cobbled streets lined with buildings dating to the late 19th century, while the 90-m (295-ft) viewing platform over the Big Hole allows visitors to look into the murky lake below. There is also a model of a mine shaft and the Real Diamond Display holds replicas of uncut stones.
Dating from 1896, this luxurious club was the meeting place of mining magnates and saw much wheeling and dealing. Today it houses a four-star boutique hotel, two restaurants and conference facilities.
t A tram in Kimberley Mine Museum’s Old Mining Village
This gallery contains 8,000 photographs of anthropological interest taken over 20 years by Alfred Duggan-Cronin from 1897.
In these gardens, five bronze miners surround the Digger’s Memorial Fountain. A marble colonnade contains a bust of Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, the German-born diamond buyer who in 1917 founded the giant Anglo-American Corporation.
Situated in the grounds of the Oppenheimer Memorial Gardens, this gallery houses a superb collection of paintings and other artworks. It covers a broad spectrum of styles, ranging from 17th-century Dutch and Flemish Old Masters to works by contemporary South African artists.
Cecil John Rhodes stayed in this building during the South African War. It now houses a museum of natural and cultural history, with ethnological and archaeological displays, as well as rock paintings.
Did You Know?
The Big Hole is the largest man-made hole in the world.
The Big Hole in Figures
Covering an area of 17 ha (43 acres), the Big Hole has a perimeter of 1.6 km (1 mile). It initially reached a depth of 800 m (2,600 ft), the first 240 m (780 ft) of which was laboriously dug by hand. An underground shaft increased the depth to 1,098 m (3,569 ft) and by 1914 some 22.6 million tonnes of rock had been excavated, yielding a total of 14.5 million carats of diamonds.