Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Black Eagle at Vulture Restaurant, It Attacked Baboons Trying to get Pieces of Meat
Cape Vulture at Drakensberg Vulture Restaurant
Small groups of us also went on study and research trips to the Rand gold mines, and even
drilled in the conglomerate stope faces for gold in some of the world's deepest mines. At that
time, as I recall, seams had 10 to 20 grams of gold per ton but some areas that had been set
aside for drilling in lean times had 50 grams per ton. The rock faces were hot to the touch
despite water being used for cooling. We also went on trips to study the sugar industry and my
father accompanied me on a trip to a new sugar mill built near Malelane. The wild arid
Bushveld, with the aid of irrigation from the Crocodile, Komati and Lomati rivers, was going
to be turned into giant fields of sugar cane, as had happened in Natal and Zululand, resulting in
one of the world's largest sugar industries. Our neighbor's farm where lions and leopards
prowled on cattle became a sugar plantation infested instead with cane rats and mambas,
sustained by water from nearby rivers.
The geology of the Drakensberg was fascinating. Essentially a layer of volcanic magma
poured out and basalt capped mountains of sediment, sandstone and red ochre clay, and caves
formed by water erosion under the basalt. From some 2,500 feet we would climb to the top
basalt escarpment of about 10,000 feet. The Tugela Falls is the world's second highest
waterfall plunging 3,000 feet in three cascades down the cliff face. Once when up there, in a
period of 5 minutes, the sky turned from sunny and bright to dense fog and we barely made it
back to our Crow's Nest cave. Baboons would regularly roll rocks down on us while hiking or
raid the caves to steal tinned food cans that they smashed on rocks. Once, after climbing
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