Source: CCTV.com

10-24-2006 17:26

Johannesburg: the biggest city in South Africa, is a typical international metropolis where the traffic is always busy but where tourists from all over the world are attracted because by both its beautiful scenery and moderate weather. here in 1886, huge lodes of gold were found, triggering a gold rush which gave to the city. It was the prosperity that followed that brought Johannesburg its reputation as a city of gold.

100 years ago in South Africa, the numerous fortune-hunters who joined the gold rush were attracted to the one rule of the game which said, according to law, that anyone who found a lode of gold could own the whole mountain.

Beside this Johannesburg road stands the statue of George Harrison: with a hoe in one hand and a rock containing gold ore in the other, it tells passers-by of the history of Johannesburg. George Harrison joined what was the worldwide gold rush of that period, from Oceania from where he travelled to California, and then to South Africa where the gold rush just began. In the first several years, however, he seemed unable to shake off his bad luck: he had been fooled many times by a kind of yellow iron ore that appeared in very way to be like gold ore but was known to others as “fool’s gold.”.

Soon George Harrison ran out of his savings and had to work for a farm-owner to make a living but just as he was about to give up his dream of gold, the Goddess of Fortune began to smile on him. One morning in 1886 when he was walking down a hill, he stumbled over a rock and fell to the ground; in anger, he started to smash the rock with his hoe, and to his surprise, he saw gold shining from the rock fragments.

Through this accidental discovery a gold lode 430 kilometres long and 24 kilometres wide was found. Two governmental officials, one called John and the other Hannes, were sent here for undertake further research on the discovery, and their names were then used to name the land where the gold was found. This was the beginning of Johannesburg. Since he had no money to explore the gold mine, Harrison finally sold the mining rights… for 10 pounds.

With a century of development, today’s South Africa has established many super mining companies with first-class technologies, especially in deep-mine technology. In order to know how the exploitation of gold works in South Africa, we came to the famous TauTona Gold Mine, which belongs to the Krngerrand Mining Co. Ltd. The mine is 3,500 meters deep, and is one of the deepest mines in the world.

Since there is unpredictable danger in filming deep in a mine, all of our crewmembers have to sign a document which will ensure one thing: whatever happens, it is not the responsibility of the mining company.

Guided by the mineworkers, our crewmembers walk toward a tall building which looks like a water tower but which is, in fact, the elevator that will take them down the mine shaft.

Out of the elevator, the crewmembers arrive at the first level of the mine. To go deeper they have to take another elevator. Although the mine uses advanced equipment for air-conditioning to lower the temperature, you can still feel the temperature rising rapidly.

Editor:Wang Ping