The Diamond Fields, Northern Cape
South Africa would be a very different country today if it wasn’t for the discovery of diamonds in the hot dry flat interior of the country in the late 1800’s. The small western portion of the Northern Cape Province bordering the Free State is now known as The Diamond Fields.
The primary attraction of The Diamond Fields is the city of Kimberley, which is also the Capital of the Northern Cape and the location of the Kimberly Big Hole. There are several diamond-mining and historical attractions in Kimberley itself, including the Big Hole and Kimberley Mine Museum. The Big Hole is now full of water, and other pit mines in the area have long been closed, the diamond-bearing Kimberlite pipes exhausted, but in recent years new technology has allowed the re-processing of the mine dumps, and you can once again purchase diamonds in Kimberley, at their source – the ones the original prospectors missed and of exceptional quality. However, this won’t last forever…unlike the brilliant and rare Kimberley gems themselves…and the characters from Kimberley’s prospecting and Boer War past who haunt the city, its old places and its mansions, in such numbers and allegedly so enthusiastically that it is the premier city in South Africa for ghost tours.
The only other major Diamond Fields attraction is South Africa’s newest National Park – the award-winning Mokala National Park, a conservancy for the protected camelthorn tree that is an iconic symbol of the Northern Cape, and a home to rare sable antelope and to both black and white rhino.
The Diamond Fields area is a cross karoo/kalahari type landscape, semi-arid to arid, with life-sustaining camelthorn trees scattered over red earth. The area springs up a pale covering of tall grasses after the rains, and wildife is plentiful within the confines of the Mokala Reserve. Otherwise, like much of the arid regions of central South Africa, the area outside of Kimberley is characterised by long roads under ‘Big Sky’, bushmen rock art sites, Boer War and Griqua historical sites, sheep farms, windmills, small, dusty towns with adjoined townships, friendly ‘country’ locals and streets that are often collective examples of 1800s period piece architecture.
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