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17th February 2015 - The Kimberly Diamond Industry  

Nick Trevor

At their recent Biggar Probus Club meeting, one of the club`s members Nick Trevor took the company through a most interesting illustrated history of the Kimberly Diamond industry in South Africa. Nick himself once worked at the mines.He explained in detail how diamond bearing clay was extracted from the four clay `pipes` discovered at Kimberlay. The town itself was almost  1000 miles north of Capetown, in a flat, dry, windy, hot desert.  Early prospectors were not put off, and even panned for diamonds in the main river passing south. At that time there were no roads or railroad, only horse and cart. The numerous licences issued called for a more rigorous approach, and Nick demonstrated the development of the mines from their discovery in 1872 and literally scratching at the surface, to today`s largest hole in the world. The town`s infrastructure developed and the original street trams still run !  Unfortunately Nick had no free samples to hand out.  Robert kirkhope gave the vote of thanks, and President Ian Dewar invited club members to attend the next meeting on Tuesday third March when our guest speaker would be  Robert Nimmo on  a Pilgrimage to Santiago di Compostella

 

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