Mine excursion
In the shadow of Circular Shaft
The core of Quinert’s team consists of
Eddie Milne, now operations manager
of the mining operations, as well
as Manie Swart and Rob Handley,
geologists at Shango Solutions, both
well versed in the Witwatersrand
formation. Milne is an old hand at
cleaning up historical gold mining areas
and is well known in the Western Basin,
where he was part of another Australian
outfit, Mintails, who did the same just
west of Krugersdorp. Mintails, in fact,
acquired the prospecting mining license
for West Wits soon after DRD sold
out. They still hold the licenses to mine
the historical dumps and tailings dams
in the area. Mintails, however, once
listed on the ASX, experienced financial
difficulties and was very recently sold
to an unknown buyer. Milne knows
the area like the back of his hand and
together with geologist Swart, who
worked at Durban Deep for many years,
they form a formidable team.
[16] MINING MIRROR OCTOBER 2018
Beneath the long shadows of the
historical Durban Deep Circular Shaft’s
headgear, which is one of the few
circular mining shafts ever to be sunk
in South Africa, West Wits has started
trenching the Kimberley Reef, which,
at Sol Plaatjies, dips at a 40-degree
angle. A big chunk of the area has
been mined, plugged, and compacted
and will soon be seeded as part of the
rehabilitation.
On surface, the rusted headgear is a
constant reminder of a long, sometimes
fortuitous and, at times, tumultuous
history. West Wits plans to refurbish
the old infrastructure to access what
will remain of the reefs in five or six
years’ time. In the meantime, they
will continue to unearth the easy,
shallow pickings by means of opencast
mining — a method South African
gold mining companies have always
shied away from. The mining method
includes no
blasting.
Ripping open the surface revealed the
extent of mining that has taken place
here since 1886. A labyrinth of tunnels
and all other means to access the reefs
is testimony to the ingenuity of man in
his search for gold. Many stories have
been told over the past century; most
profoundly though, the Kebble ghost
lingers. Brett Kebble was killed at the
end of one of the most extraordinary
stories ever to be written about mining
on the Rand. And Durban Deep is part
of that story.
The Kebble link
When Roger Kebble was chairman
of DRD, the shafts at Durban Deep
Mine produced between 65 000 and
85 000 ounces of gold per year. Brett
Kebble owned the adjacent Randfontein
Estates, which is today the Doornkop
Mine owned by Harmony Gold. In a
highly complex and (it has to be said)
shady deal, the two Kebbles agreed,
verbally, to consolidate these properties.
They knocked down the processing
plant at Durban Deep to access the
gold dust embedded in its foundations