During a visit to Pretoria in 1980, I jumped down into a 5 foot deep 5 foot wide storm gully running across a large area of bush, to get a view of the geology.
The bottom was Dolomite gravel with occasional fragments of quartz, and small pebbles of a grey, semi lustrous mineral grading 20mm to sand.
Picking up a large nodule, 50mm, I felt quite chuffed, it being the largest piece I'd found in half hours worth of fossicking.
Folowing the gully for another 20 yards around a bend, I was faced with a 'nodule' so big, the storm waters had passed both sides of it. 3 feet wide and about 4 feet high, and presumably a lot more of buried in the ground.
Gobsmacked!
A few miles distant was the ISCOR factory (Iron & steel Corporation of Sth Africa which was apparently built on the massive iron lode which fed the furnaces.
These deposits I saw were a part of this massive mineralised belt.
The plant itself was like a small town, and i went along one evening to take some time exposure shots, hoping to see the slag tubs being dumped
Instead, I was met by 3 security landrovers that blocked the car on three side forcing a stop. Then surrounded by 7 or 8 security gorillas with automatic machine guns, briefly arrested and had my camera confiscated.
Frog marched at gunpoint, and having to explain to a hard line Boer manager why I was there so late at night, and carrying a Russian camera to boot, tested me to the limit.
Ended well and got the camera back too. I was expecting deportation :lol:
"You Chinese think of everything!"
"But I''m not Chinese!"
"Then you must have forgotten something!"