The assay result was hardly promising - it contained a small amount of gold but not enough to warrant any expenditure on development . However, I decided that a little more investigation would be interesting so I borrowed some dynamite and fuse from the owner of the Rip Top mine nearby and Peter Wood and I set off to do some blasting. We placed a stick of dynamite in a crack in the rock, packed it closely with loose stone, set what we considered as a reasonable amount of fuse, lit it and scrambled away to a safe postion behind a big boulder about 50 metres away. The next five minutes passed terribly slowly and we were wondering how one set about investigating a misfire, when there was a very satisfactory bang and a cloud of smoke and dust. Then from the midst of the dust came a black object hurtling towards us which made us fling ourselves to the ground in terror thinking it was a rock. As, it happened, it was a bird, a fork-tailed drongo, which was evacuating the scene at top speed! Dusting ourselves off rather sheepishly we investigated the blast site and found, as we should have expected, that we had made no impression on the rock face itself. That was my first and last experience of blasting.
An asbestos boom was taking place at that time and through my own prospecting and from reports received, I found and pegged three asbestos claims. Being a civil servant I was not allowed to purchase a prospecting licence and peg my own claims so had to involve another party each time. There were three of us whose initials were T, A and P so our claims were the Tap Claims. There is a tremendous fascination in the prospecting game, and whenever I wandered in the bush, I carried a prospecting pick in my belt and a sample bag in my pocket hoping that I would come across a claim that would make my fortune.
We put beacons and prospecting notices on our asbestos finds and encountered the most extraordinary difficulty in surveying blocks in hilly country, finding that pacing 100 metres east up a hill, 100 metres south down a hill and 100 metres west along the bottom of the hill meant that the finishing point turned out to be at least 40 metres from the starting point. So we averaged things out and I have not yet discovered how a surveyor copes with the undulations to produce a neat rectangle on the map.
None of the asbestos claims proved to be of any economic importance but I still have samples of the ribbon fibre we found and can still recall the thrill of breaking the greenish grey serpentine rock and finding glistening silver ribbons of asbestos. Allied to asbestos, or so I was told, was talc, and I found a deposit of this which was in the form of creamy white solidified fibre with no tensile strength whatsoever, and which, when scraped down, revealed a surface texture as soft as the finest satin. Close by was a seam of opalite, also a creamy colour but of an entirely different texture. When split it broke on cleavage lines leaving a face like glass or obsidian. The peculiar thing about opalite was that when it was heated in a sealed container its reputed 10% water content boiling away had the effect of shattering the rock to powder with a noise like falling hail.
Belingwe was well endowed with the pegmatite minerals with which tin and beryllium are associated and I was always on the look out for the distinctive green hexagonal crystals of beryllium. I never found any but am still frustrated that I was not the one to find the Sandawana emeralds because my wanderings took me very close to where they were found. Emerald is the purest form of beryl. I found a deposit of black mineral in pegmatite and thought it was tin, but the Government Geological Survey office which identified my various finds said it was garnet, not of gemstone quality - another broken dream! Eight months after I had left Belingwe, I received a telegram from the other members of the T A P Syndicate saying they had pegged a very valuable deposit of tin in the name of all three members of the syndicate. I wish they had not bothered to tell me for once again this proved valueless. There was one particular hill on the way to the Belingwe communal area which was almost bare of trees amongst other hills that were well-wooded and I thought that possibly some interesting mineralisation caused this anomaly. Judicious picking revealed some bright yellow powdery deposits, amongst the country rock and I had high hopes that I had located uranium, but once again the result of the test was negative.
I climbed on the top of the Buhwa moutain in Belingwe 35 years ago and saw for myself that it was solid iron ore just waiting to be exploited. How different it was then to what it is now, with the proud and distinctive shape of the mountain hacked away by man in his never-ending quest for riches. I wonder what has happened to the little community of Shangaans who used to live at the base of Buhwa, with their vegetable and citrus gardens watered by mountain streams. And I wonder whether there is any truth in the story that in the cave on nearby Hwiki hill was found the image of a golden calf!
Exploring the wild parts of Zimbabwe with a prospecting pick was a fascinating pastime and I would recommend it to any young person looking for a different way to spend their leisure time. Unfortunately the procedure is not as easy now as it was then, but permission to enter land can usually be obtained without too much difficulty.
In the Kwekwe district I was shown how gold deposits have been found with no indication on the surface that any mineralization at all was present in the depths of the earth. The West family had pioneered the use of the smallest miners of all in prospecting for gold - the common white ant, or termite. A sample of an antheap was taken and panned in the usual way and the resulting "tail" of heavy minerals was examined microscopically for gold, which was often found. The amount of infinitesimally small gold flakes was an indication as to whether it was worthwhile to sink an exploratory borehole in the vicinity. The story of why these tiny miners brought gold to the surface was most interesting.
Termites need water to survive and also need it to produce saliva to mix with earth to produce the antheaps in which their busy lives are led. In the dry season, the only source of water is underground so these amazing little blind workers tunnel deep under their nests to find water which is sometimes as much as 60 metres below ground level. The earth through which they tunnel is all brought to the surface and if it is mineralized the microscopic flakes will also be brought to the surface and form part of the antheap. Some workers bring earth up and when the water has been reached, others bring tiny droplets with them. Truly a fascinating blend of biology and geology. The Termite Mine near Kwekwe was discovered by this means and as far as I know is still in production.
I understand that there is a possibility that diamond pipes, overlaid by vast deposits of Kalahari sand could be discovered in this manner in the Western parts of Matabeleland, an indication being an antheap of markedly different colour from the surrounding surface earth.
A friend of mine with no previous interest in prospecting spent all his spare time digging up the back yard of his Government quarters in the gold belt near Esigodini after he picked up a nugget of pure gold weighing two ounces, but nothing more was found.
If one looks around one can come across signs of ancient mining activities, not only in the actual working, all of which have been further exploited, but also in the periphery. There are two places in the Esigodini area, one on Komani farm and one at the side of the road 3 kilometres away south of Mbalabala where a series of ore grinding mortar holes are found in the granite, at a considerable distance from any known gold working. Here the miners of pre-history ground their gold ore into powder with round rocks that fitted two hands. The pestle rocks eventually wore out and were renewed while the mortar depressions were used until they became too big and were then abandoned for a new site close by, until eventually the flat rock face looked cratered like pictures of the surface of the moon.
Ancient smelting ovens are also a rare and interesting find and I was puzzled to come across one almost on top of a massive granite hill overlooking the Mwanezi river many miles from the nearest deposit of iron or any other metal that might have been smelted there. Possibly it was sited there for some long-forgotten spiritual or mystical reason. The product of that remote oven, designed as usual in the form of the female torso, must indeed have been valued considering the hard labour involved in processing the ore so far from where it was mined.