Rosh Pinah Geological Tour

Before heading out on our field trip, Gisela provided us with a thorough overview of the geology of the area, information on the mining techniques and history of Rosh Pinah and some insight into her background as former exploration geologist for the Rosh Pinah mine. And soon we were heading out along the newly graded C13 River Road to visit the first of the abandoned alluvial diamond mines.

Along the way, we stopped at a very interesting road cutting at the ‘dropstone’ deposit, where there was clear evidence of major geomorphological changes to the rocks and substrates of the area, no doubt contributing millions of years ago, to the formation of such a rich and diverse variety of minerals found in the area today. Here we saw striations in the rock face, bands of conglomerate rock which under tremendous pressure at some point in the history of earth buckled and bent into sweeping waves of layered rock, massive brooding solitary boulders eroded from the softer surrounding material which have been the centre of dissension amongst the experts as to whether they could have been carried into the area as part of glacial deposits.

As we tumbled out the vehicle at the first alluvial diamond site, we hardly stopped to appreciate the view, as our eyes were already turning and tuning into the abandoned diggings in the naive hope that we would stumble across “one” waiting all these years for us to arrive. Of course, our minds knew better, and it was still very interesting to dig against the wall of the pit for other material which duly revealed itself such as agate, carnelian and exquisitely fragile more recently grown gypsum crystals.

Our next stop took us to the historic Lorelei Copper Mine where we spent a fair amount of time wandering through the deserted buildings, absorbing the nostalgic essence of the site, letting our imagination roll back the years the sweat, manual labour and extreme exertion that the old miners edured. We marvelled at the tenacity of the old timers and the enormity of the challenges they faced and overcame. The mine tunnel itself has been filled up for safety reasons, but there is still evidence of the workings and the old track which used to ferry the rocks from the mine to the leeching dams.

After a quick stop to search for Orange River Quartz at one of the quartz outcrops, we headed down to see the historic Sendelingsdrift Pontoon which has been in operation for 43 years, a curios but novel border post into Namibia. The peaceful scene of the pont waiting sedately to ferry cars across the Orange River belies a bit of a chequered history of smugglers and black market traders, disastrous crossings resulting in a watery grave for many vehicles and several wash-aways during the 80’s and as recent as 1998 when a flood took the pont exploring further down the canyon. Thankfully the current day design and operation seems reliable enough with a newly designed shallow draft vessel capable of carrying 6 metric tonnes.