Gold & Ancient Workings!

Maybe there are a couple of old-timer, gold miners out there who just happen to read this old-timer, gold miner’s blog. That would be ‘cool’ as the youngsters put it, nothing like a powerful draught of nostalgia to get the juices flowing. Let me think now, was it back in ’71 or ‘72...

Knee-haltered my burro and left him there for the day; took my pan and .44 Winchester then headed up into the mountains... Lies, all lies! Sounded good though. For burro read short-wheel base Land Rover; series I with failing brakes and a busted front prop-shaft so no four-wheel drive. For Winchester, read .22 Remington long rifle, just to scare the crap out of baboons if they came too close. And my dog (promised him a posthumous mention), spent most of his time with his butt stuck fast in a snake hole or eyeing up rock rabbits with, what I suspect was a view to swelling their numbers as well as his belly. Calling him a strange little dog would be listed by the tabloids as understatement of the year – hence his name; Roger Bacon. But that’s another story.

Found us a small reef, me and my old man; only a foot wide at best but going some twelve ounces of raw gold to the ton of ore mined – pretty good money even in those days. Slight problem though, I had a knack of finding things where most folks wouldn’t dare to walk. Sort of up a mountain; pretty well straight up for the last hundred feet – even the eagles built their nests with one side higher than the other to stop the eggs rolling out... (Finish this next time; two in the morning – eyelids welded shut)

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School Hols...

The late fifties and early sixties held for me the makings of fond memories. Boarding school was, in my third year there, turning from crap to semi-crap; holidays were eagerly awaited and then, in the blinking of an eye, devoured with alacrity.

‘We’re going to Zimbabwe Ruins, tomorrow,’ mother piped at me, as though it would be our first visit. ‘Lunch at the hotel and you can swim if you wish, so remember to take your costume.’

Today went and tomorrow came; off we went, Zephyr Six loaded to the gunnels with unnecessary necessities, mother’s fags and Kleenex box wedged against the windscreen. My father, without so much as batting an eyelid flooded the tank with ten bob’s worth of proper petrol, pumped the tyres front-and-back to 32 psi, watched the pump attendant slop his rag across the windscreen, drag his rubber scraper thing and then grin like a wonderland cat for his customary sixpenny piece.

After much saluting and more grins we lurched for the local equivalent of the Trans-Africa Highway. To this day, I can remember every twist, turn, up-and-down and dodgy pot-hole – twenty five miles to Fort Victoria and another ten or so to the Great Zimbabwe Ruins Hotel car park. Always remember the clink of ice in G & T’s, the clunk of Castle beers and coke bottles. Sixpenny packets of potato chips; waiters dressed in white with their Tommy Cooper, red Fez cocked at a jaunty angle (nicked the last two words from a book) and everyone smiled. Guess back then they had never heard of HIV, war and starvation – oh, what fun times waited ahead...

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Sons of Africa; an extract:

... ‘Would you look at that, Mister Chulmleigh? A more marvellous sight I swear I’ve never before clapped me eyes on.’

Again, O’Reilly plunged his fist into a bucket of water, rubbed his find between thumb and forefinger and then held the shining artefact to the sunlight. ‘And I tell you, Chulmleigh. Never in a dozen lifetimes would I prefer the company of a dozen whores to that of this little beauty.’

No bigger than O’Reilly’s little finger, a golden replica, that of a winged beast, half bird half reptile had been skilfully brought to life by ancient goldsmiths and even though it had been hidden beneath the ground for more than a thousand years its original form remained unblemished. The melancholic colour of that precious metal was still very much alive; red and raw, as though only that morning it had been poured from the smelter’s furnace.

‘Should we be handing it in to the company’s Ancient Ruins people d’yer think?’

‘And the mother of all pox on Mister bloody Rhodes’ company,’ Chulmleigh sniggered. ‘It goes in the bag with the others and we’ll have the buggers melted down and sold before his committee tumbles to our little scheme.’

O’Reilly opened the neck of a hessian sack and peered inside.

‘I’d say not far off a goodly fifty ounces or so.’

The finds were made up mainly of beads and beaten foil, all of that same precious metal – some still fixed to remnants of wood and yellow ivory, held in place by exquisite bindings of drawn gold and tiny, hand-forged copper nails. A few of the treasures had been cast as solid pieces; portrayals of wild animals – buffalo, rhinoceros and even a cobra’s likeness; the snake’s hood fully blown – portentous and threatening, its eyes were cruel reptilian slits set deep inside the gold. O’Reilly discarded the bag with casual disinterest, to him the treasures were merely an easy means of lining his pockets. His thoughts swung more to filling his belly.

‘Bloody starved I am, time to get some grub on the fire.’ He crossed to what was left of a butchered impala ram – cursed the early signs of putrefaction and slapped the palm of his hand to the beast’s rump to clear the flies. He drew his knife along the soft indentation of the animal’s haunch so that the copper coloured hide parted to expose clean pink flesh beneath. He put the weight of his shoulder behind the stroke and sliced down through muscle and ligaments; cutting deep into the animal’s hip to break the bone free from its socket. He dropped the hind leg on a tussock of grass then wiped his hands on his britches.

‘Rake up the coals,’ he told Chulmleigh, ‘while I fetch us a little something to wash down our dinner.’

They sat with their backs to a wall of granite blocks, sixteen feet thick at its base and built to reach up thirty feet above their heads. O’Reilly perused the stone-work – each block had been cut from living granite – shaped and squared to fit the one before it.

 ‘So whose name would you put to having built this place, Mister Chulmleigh? Blacks couldn’t have done it – not too good with the old straight lines these Shona lads. Not in a thousand years could they build a place like this.’

‘Don’t give a damn. Made ourselves a tidy profit and that’s what matters. Blacks or us Irish, I don’t give a monkey’s turd.’

O’Reilly passed him the bottle. His hand wavered – now his eyes were fixed to a gap in the stonework.

‘Hand me the rifle,’ he whispered. ‘Slowly now, Mister Chulmleigh, we have visitors. You get on down there behind the wall whilst I sort out our peeping-tom. Don’t let the little black lassie slip through your fingers, mind.’

O’Reilly waited for Chulmleigh to make his way back inside the labyrinth of stone passageways. He fired from a sitting position; with his knees drawn up as steady support for the rifle. From a distance of only fifty yards the bullet struck exactly where he had intended, high up on the ape’s chest...

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