Help in setting a cache please

[+Birdman-of-liskatraz]

Cornwall is an area of the United Kingdom with a very historic and well known mining industry. When the mines here were closing many of the miners emigrated overseas where their hard rock mining skills were very much valued.

 

A group of cachers in Cornwall are shortly issuing a Cornish Geocoin and as part of that I'm trying to arrange to set up a series of caches in areas that our Cornish Miners emigrated to.

 

I already have plans made for Canada and Australia but would like to include South Africa too.

 

I'm no expert on South African geography but I'm looking for someone who could hide a cache (Provided by me) in an area with a Cornish connection - such a place is likely to be any area with a mining history, but some names that I can see in a large reference book are... O'okiep Mines, Namaqualand, Port Nolloth, Kimberley, Central Langlate Mine... and I'm sure there must be many others..

 

If any one would be interested in help Please contact me through my Geocaching profile...

 

Many thanks

 

Steve

[+warthog]

From Cornish Miners and the Witwatersrand Gold Mines in South Africa, c. 1890-1904 : Page 3 The full story can be read at this link.

 

Thus any mining area on the Witwatersrand (Johanesburg, East Rand, West Rand) area would be good for a cache like this. I am more than will to pleace such a cache for you. Contact me via Geocaching email, if you want me to assist.

 

Cornish Miners and the Witwatersrand Gold Mines in South Africa, c. 1890-1904 : Page 3

 

Cornish Miners

Perhaps more has been written about Cornish miners than any other group of miners in the world. As we shall see, Cornwall supplied the greatest number of skilled white miners to the Witwatersrand gold mines. It was estimated by a government commission in 1903 at least twenty-five per-cent of the entire white male workforce on the Rand originated in Cornwall. 12 Given that Afrikaners were included in this calculation, Cornish men working on the Rand would have been considerably greater among the immigrant population. The 1904 Transvaal census figures show that 35,701 men on the Rand were born in British Europe, while 28,761 were born in southern Africa. The total white male population of the Rand was listed as 71,362. 13 These figures suggest, then, that there were approximately 17,500 to 18,000 men from Cornwall, easily the largest component of the immigrant white working class in the Transvaal. As the overwhelming majority of Cornish immigrants were skilled miners, their numbers among this section of the population were especially significant. The fact that Cornwall had not developed a trade union tradition, and that few Cornishmen can be identified as trade unionists in the Transvaal, was a key factor in the development of the white working class on the Rand.

 

By the time the Union of South Africa was established in 1910, many Cornish miners had returned to Cornwall or moved on to another mining area. This was due to several factors. The most important were the depression on the Rand from 1903-08 and the mine owners policy of ‘de-skilling’, gradually moving white miners into supervisory roles. After the 1907–08 Mining Commission Report, there are very few references to a section of the population as being specifically Cornish. Yet the significance of Cornish miners to the history of white labor on the Rand is crucial. It was during the period from 1890–1910 that the position of white miners in the labor structure developed on the Rand was entrenched. The failure of a widespread union movement to arise before 1907, in large degree, can be attributed to the lack of involvement by the overwhelming majority of Cornish miners.

[+Birdman-of-liskatraz]

Many thanks... an email will be on it's way very shortly....

 

Steve - Cornwall - UK