RE: Probation period24 Apr 2026 11:10
Alexander Bay has a very long history of finding high quality polished by the conditions Diamonds..........snippet from a very old article
Up here in Alexander Bay, you are in a world few people ever see. Wind-lashed beaches littered with twisted driftwood logs, the pounding onslaught of the Atlantic Ocean, the ghosts of ever-patrolling diamond cops, homing pigeons with dodgy agendas and, just in case you were hungry, the cheapest, freshest little oysters on earth.
The Ageless Diamond
And yet, the sweet little Orange River diamonds from the Alexander Bay fields have been adding a glint to lovers’ eyes since the late 1920s. The area north and south of the Mother River’s mouth is one of the world’s treasure houses of fabulous, naturally-polished high-grade diamonds.
The Namas, Bushmen and Strandlopers who walked its shores centuries ago used to pick the diamonds up as they lay glinting in the sands and give them to their children as toys.
Alexander Bay is so very far away from the glittering windows of Tiffany’s or the New York Diamond Dealers Club on West 47th Street, the Japanese jewellery houses of the Ginza in Tokyo or No 17 Charterhouse Street in London, where more than 80 percent of the world’s diamonds pass through on their way to the ring fingers and elegant necks of lucky ladies.
Touring the Mine
The tour of the mining area (organised in advance) begins at the Alexander Bay Mine Museum.
“The diamonds, washed down the Orange River, mostly lie in a sediment of fossilised oyster shells,” explains the museum curator and tour guide, Helené Mostert. “To get to this sediment, one has to go through as much as 40 metres of sand and calcrete. Then you get to the gravel on the bedrock, which bears the diamonds.”
They search for diamonds out at sea and on land here, and the divers share their profits with Alexkor
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