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Jordi Fabre
Overall coordinator of the Forum
Joined: 07 Aug 2006
Posts: 4919
Location: Barcelona
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 Posted: Mar 27, 2011 13:27 Post subject: Travels and Jokes of Rock Currier |
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During the process of the translation to Spanish language of the articles of Rock Currier "About Mineral Collecting" to be published in FMF-Spanish side, it happened that by my request Rock sent to us few personal images and he added some texts, so I thought others might like to see them as well and I requested and obtained permission to use these texts and images here too.
Ladies & gentleman, have fun! ;-)
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| On the way to the Sulphur mine at El Desierto, San Pablo de Napa, Daniel Campos Province, Potosi Department, Bolivia with Alfredo Petrov we stopped at the little "island" (surrounded by salt rather than water) in the worlds largest salt lake, the Salar de Uyuni, There was a free flying eagle that liked people and would come and land on some people and winnow the "lice" out of their hair. At least that is what I think it was doing. |
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48031 Time(s) |
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| Here Alfredo and I are buying nice big pieces of pure Teallite from the the miners cooperative at the Carguaicollo Mine in Bolivia. We tried to explain to them that crystals were like flowers and you certainly would not want to step on a flower before giving it to your sweetheart. |
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| In Chapari province in Bolivia, while visiting the worlds largest open pit danburite mine (about the size of a wash tub) we stopped to help a local farmer turn over his coca leaves. |
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Visiting the ruby silver capital of the world (Colquechaca) was interesting.
Terrible food, worse accommodations and not specimens. |
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| The Sulphur mine at El Desierto at the south end of the Salar de Empexa. A remote place about 15000 feet high on the border with Chile. Few people would want too live here. It took several days to get the smell of Sulphur out of our clothes and we didn't even do much digging. Did get a container load of Sulphur specimens here which they packed in the local version of popcorn which was cheaper than paper. It stunk up my warehouse and turned our silver jewelry black. |
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Bolivian unicorns pictured on the wall of the mine office at El Desierto, Bolivia. You see these mythical creatures in mining camps all over the world.
I finally realized here in Bolivia that these were the Bolivian equivalent of unicorns. These were mythical creatures, that none of the miners at the mining camps had ever seen but they believed in their existence and hoped to encounter one some day. |
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| On the way to Viloco (cassiterite locality) 1975. This road was at about 16000 feet and the road in one place had mine tracks across it. The road crossed just below the glacier in the background where the local women were washing clothes in the melt water coming from it. Trying to get by a truck coming the other way was a hair raising experience. It was about 1000 feet down to the first bounce. |
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| One one of the streets in Potosi that lead directly up onto the mountain. Here a lady with a little store that the miners would pass on the way to work sells mining supplies. Picks, shovels, dynamite, caps and fuse. No permit needed. |
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48074 Time(s) |
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Amir Akhavan
Joined: 01 Dec 2009
Posts: 95
Location: Hamburg
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| Posted: Mar 28, 2011 18:59 Post subject: Re: Travels and Jokes of Rock Currier |
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Great! That was fun to read!
Are there more to come?
_________________
Amir C. Akhavan, Hamburg, Germany |
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Jordi Fabre
Overall coordinator of the Forum
Joined: 07 Aug 2006
Posts: 4919
Location: Barcelona
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| Posted: Mar 29, 2011 02:08 Post subject: Re: Travels and Jokes of Rock Currier |
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| Amir Akhavan wrote: |
Are there more to come?
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I don't know Amir, it will be according Rock. Hopefully yes! ;-)
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Jordi Fabre
Overall coordinator of the Forum
Joined: 07 Aug 2006
Posts: 4919
Location: Barcelona
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| Posted: Apr 17, 2011 13:14 Post subject: Travels and Jokes of Rock Currier - 1 |
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Good News. Here you have some more delightful photos & texts from Rock Currier!
Ladies & gentleman, get fun! ;-)
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| The Orange River. You cross this river from the Republic of South Africa and when you reach the north end of the Bridge you are in Namibia, or South West Africa in the 70s when I was going there for specimens. |
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47607 Time(s) |
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| The first trip I took to Tusmeb, we drove fro Johannesburg to Tsumeb. It took about two and a half days. We were driving in this little pickup truck and were taking two male goats up to a ranch north of Tsumeb. The damn things peed all over my luggage and even going 60 miles an hour you could smell them in the cab. And people have the nerve to tell me that my specimens are too expensive? |
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| Much of the way when you got close to Tsumeb was bush veldt like this. This picture was taken at sundown just after a storm and the waining sun on the hills made it look like some other planet. |
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| Most all of the roads around Tsumeb are not paved and you have to be careful about termite mounds which can spring up over night and have killed more than one motorist who ran into them. |
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| Main Street Tsumeb. You can see the head frame of the Tsumeb Corporation Limited mine on the right down toward the end of the street. A large percentage of the Tsumeb specimens in our collections came up this shaft. |
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| Mineral dealer Clive Quiet in his "rock room". Clive was my main contact in Tsumeb and between trips he would send me thousands of small dioptase specimens and specimens of other minerals. We used to run around together and visit the other miners to see what they had when they came off shift. Clive is wrapping up a specimen with toilet paper which he used to buy in big lots like five big boxes at a time. The toilet paper manufactures down in the Republic must have assumed that everyone in Tsumeb had the runs. |
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| Boxes full of dioptase specimens and Dr. Mary Johnson, Harvard trained mineralogist. Well back then she was just an undergrad at the California Institute of Technology. One summer she helped me catalogue my mineral collection. She could paint the smallest numbers that I have ever seen. |
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47696 Time(s) |
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| The garage of Robie Groebler, a miner at Tsumeb. The bottom shelf was all specimens for one rand, the one above were two rand and so on. He got in trouble with the mine for selling mineral specimens. |
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| Here is a letter from the office of the mine manager informing all the miners that taking specimens from the mine was theft and that they would take legal action. |
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| One of the great dioptase specimens that was in the Collection of Sid Peters. He eventually sold it for $10,000 which was a huge amount for a specimen at the time but today sounds cheap. Its not a good picture of the piece. |
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| Old time Tsumeb. The pay master arriving on a narrow gage railway car. Early 20th century. |
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| Some places to visit around Tsumeb. Some of the names will be familiar to all mineral collectors. |
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| The smelter at Tsumeb. Many of the finest mineral specimens produced by Tsumeb have been turned into copper in this place. |
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| The Grootfontein meteorite. Just laying out in the open. Why not, it is just way too heavy for anyone to haul it off. You could see where people had been trying to break off pieces of it. I think the weight of broken hammers and chisels by far outweighed any pieces of the thing that people had managed to carry off. I would not want to be any where within 50 miles of the thing when it hit the ground. |
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47889 Time(s) |
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| Meteorites from the Grootfontein fall that were found in the strew field. Even the smallest of these weighed more than 200 pounds. At least I could not pick up the smallest on them. They used to keep them in the park till someone tied a rope to one of them and tried to drag it away. In the morning they found a broken rope and the meteorite that they had managed to drag about 20 feet from the pile of its cousins. In the mid 70s they had moved them to the old fort at the top of the hill which was kept locked up at night. |
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47605 Time(s) |
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_________________
Audaces fortuna iuvat |
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Amir Akhavan
Joined: 01 Dec 2009
Posts: 95
Location: Hamburg
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| Posted: Apr 17, 2011 13:33 Post subject: Re: Travels and Jokes of Rock Currier |
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Great :-) :-)
Thanks!
Amir
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Amir C. Akhavan, Hamburg, Germany |
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Debbie Woolf
Joined: 09 Feb 2009
Posts: 168
Location: Kent
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| Posted: Apr 17, 2011 19:18 Post subject: Re: Travels and Jokes of Rock Currier |
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| Great stuff ! I had a good laugh at the goat story in the bakkie (pick-up truck) a common mode of transport for animals, in Cape Town we once saw a bakkie with a race horse roped in the back & mounted by the jockey whilst being driven on the motorway to the racecourse. All I can say is 'only in Africa'
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Jordi Fabre
Overall coordinator of the Forum
Joined: 07 Aug 2006
Posts: 4919
Location: Barcelona
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| Posted: May 08, 2011 14:03 Post subject: Travels and Jokes of Rock Currier - 3 |
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A new batch of photos & texts from Rock Currier
Ladies & gentleman, enjoy it! ;-)
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| In a mine for massive rose quartz not far from Betafo, Madagascar. Please don't think that I did my own, but when you are confronted with such a nice big juicy boulder of the stuff, you can't help but show off a little. |
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47722 Time(s) |
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| A hand dug shaft of a "celestite mine" near the village of Sakoany, Madagascar. Here you can see a miner and the little foot holds in the side of the shaft that he uses as a ladder to go down and come up. There is no wood used to shore up the sides of the shaft which is in not very well consolidated earth. |
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47268 Time(s) |
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| Negotiating in the weeds for rhodizite/londonite specimens at the weekly market at Ibiti, Madagascar. The market had a little separate area for those who were running little gambling operations like a roulette wheel made from a bicycle wheel and little dice games. The specimen guys hung out in this area. You are not likely to find anything really good here, but I did buy about 100 specimens of so so rhodizite. |
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47197 Time(s) |
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| The town of Taxco. There are still silver mines active here that produce specimens, but most of the town, a town of 1000 silversmiths, takes the silver produced here and from other places and turns it into a multitude of silver items. |
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47234 Time(s) |
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| Silver ships made from the silver mined at the mines at Taxco. |
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47239 Time(s) |
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| The suspension bridge designed by Washington Roebling that spans the canyon at Mapimi, Mexico. You can sit on it at sunset and watch the bats fly out of the old workings. |
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Duncan Miller
Joined: 25 Apr 2009
Posts: 138
Location: South Africa
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| Posted: May 09, 2011 09:27 Post subject: Re: Travels and Jokes of Rock Currier |
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I don't want to hijack this thread, but it is about reminiscence. I thought I recognised Rock Currier's photograph of the Sid Peters dioptase. Here is another photo of the same specimen, which I took in Windhoek in 1975. It was a whopper, with some nearly thumb-sized crystals. At the time Sid also had some spectacular cerussite specimens, the largest of which I also photographed. It was a double spray, about 20 cm across. I wonder where it is now.
The dioptase specimen connection made me realise that in 1975 Rock and I met each other, briefly, in Sid's shop, where I was working for him faceting some of his Cape Cross jeremejevites. Rock astounded me by knowing then what they were.
Duncan Miller
Cape Town
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Jordi Fabre
Overall coordinator of the Forum
Joined: 07 Aug 2006
Posts: 4919
Location: Barcelona
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| Posted: May 21, 2011 15:13 Post subject: Travels and Jokes of Rock Currier - 4 |
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More photos & texts from Rock Currier
Ladies & gentleman, enjoy it! ;-)
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| Mina Farola near Copiapo Chile. I never did find out why they had these toilets out in the open like this, but they did offer a wonderful view of the surrounding country. |
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| Some medium size quartz crystals that were with one of the dealers in Crystalina, Brazil. |
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| Isla mine near Taquaral, MG, Brazil. To get to the mine which is in the middle of the river you got in a dugout for the ride out to the mine. Here they produced some of the best specimens of rose quartz crystals known and many fine specimens or rare phosphate minerals that were often associated with the rose quartz. |
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46862 Time(s) |
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| Inside a 2 meter diamond saw at one of the factories in Soledade, Rio Grande do Sul. They commonly use these saws to cut open the big amethyst geodes that are mined in the region. Kerosene is used as a coolant for the big diamond blades in these saws. Sometimes they catch on fire as you can see in the next picture. |
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46838 Time(s) |
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| A 2 meter diamond saw that has been through at least one fire. |
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| A lot of amethyst with one of the dealers in Soledade, RGS, Brazil. An acre of amethyst anyone? |
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| Another acre of amethyst. |
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