Kimberley, South Africa

Kimberley is a city in the province of Northern Cape in central South Africa. The city is renowned the world over for its history as one of the biggest diamond mines in the world.

The discovery of diamonds in Kimberley goes back to 1866, when Erasmus Jacobs found pebble that turned out to be a 21.25 carat (4.25 g) diamond, later named Eureka. Three years later, another diamond was discovered in the same area. It was named the Star of South Africa.

Big Hole open-pit diamond mine, Kimberley, South Africa
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Open_pit_mine.jpg
Author: Irene2005


The discovery of an 83.50 carat (16.7 g) diamond on the Vooruitzigt farm belonging to the De Beers brothers in 1871 was a start of a diamond rush, with prospectors stampeding into the area, a hillock that soon became the world renowned Kimberley Mine.

With the discovery of diamonds, the Vooruitzigt farm got a new name: New Rush. However the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Kimberley, would have nothing to do with a name as unsophisticated as New Rush, or the original Dutch name, which he could neither write nor pronounce properly.

McGregor Museum, Kimberley
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:McGregor_Museum,_Kimberley_%284527868638%29.jpg
Author: flowcomm


To the task of renaming the site fell on his Colonial Secretary, J.B. Currey. Ever the diplomat, Currey those a name that for sure Lord Kimberley could write and pronounce: his own. And that was how Vooruitzigt/New Rush became Kimberley, by Proclamation on 5 July, 1873.

The hillock where Vooruitzigt Farm once stood soon disappeared under the picks and shovels of thousands of miners, creating the largest hole ever dug by hand, called simply, Big Hole. It has a surface area of 17 hectares (42 acres) and is 463 meters wide. Between 1871 and 1914, when the Big Hole closed, the site had produced 2,722 kg of diamonds.

World War I Memorial, Kimberley
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_War_I_memorial_in_Kimberley.jpg
Author: Anne97432

Visiting Kimberley

You can fly to Kimberley from major cities in South Africa. The city is served by flights from South African Airways. You can also take the Spoornet inter-city trains to Kimberley from Cape Town, Johannesburg, Bloemfontein, Pietermaritzburg, Durban and Marikeng.

Places of Interest in Kimberley

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Hello and thanks for reading this page. My name is Timothy and my hobby is in describing places so that I can share the information with the general public. My website has become the go to site for a lot of people including students, teachers, journalists, etc. whenever they seek information on places, particularly those in Malaysia and Singapore. I have been doing this since 5 January 2003, for over twenty years already. You can read about me at Discover Timothy. By now I have compiled information on thousands of places, mostly in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore, and I continue to add more almost every day. My goal is to describe every street in every town in Malaysia and Singapore.