1. THE DISCOVERY OF DIAMONDS IN SOUTH AFRICA

2. Hopetown Hopetown lies at the edge of the Great Karoo. It is situated on an arid slope leading down to the Orange River. Hopetown was a quiet farming area until several large diamonds were discovered there between 1867 and 1869.

4. Eureka Diamond The Eureka Diamond was discovered by Erasmus Jacobs, 24, on a farm on the Orange River. He was resting under a tree when he saw the stone shining in the sun. Erasmus used the stone in a game of ‘marbles’ until his mother noticed it. She mentioned it to a neighbour, Schalk van Niekerk, who offered to buy it but Mrs Jacobs gave it to him for free saying, "You can keep the stone, if you want it". He sold it for £500 (which is the equivalent of R900,000 today)

5. Star of South Africa The Star of South Africa is a 47.69- carat white diamond found by a Griqua shepherd boy in 1869 on the banks of the Orange River. He sold the stone for 500 sheep, 10 cows and a horse to Schalk van Niekerk, a local farmer famous for having acquired the Eureka Diamond in 1866. He sold it for £11,200 (the equivalent of R19 million today). The discovery caused many prospectors to rush to this new diamond field known as New Rush (later known as Kimberley).

6. Why didn’t they recognise its value? An ugly stone …

7. … gets cleaned …

8. … polished and cut …

9. … and made into jewellery!

10. Open-pit Mining Open-pit mining is a surface mining technique of extracting rock or minerals from the earth by their removal from an open pit. This form of mining differs from extractive methods that require tunneling into the earth, such as long wall mining.

11. Kimberley