Dear ,
Every Sunday, just for fun, I'll bring you something that stopped me in my tracks. An eccentric character. An improbable pursuit. An idea that refuses to leave me alone.
I'll follow my curiosity and see where it takes us. You're welcome to come along.
You know that old refrain from Capetonians? "Bru, we've got the mountain and the sea. What have you got in Johannesburg?"
Mmm. Jobs?
But let me not be churlish. Turns out we had mountains and seas long before the Cape had its famous ones.
Sometimes, I feel tiny. Especially when I think about what we're standing on here in Johannesburg.
We're standing on a beach. Well, not quite. But almost three billion years ago, this was a landscape of mountains, rivers and shorelines. That's roughly 2.4 billion years before the sandstone that makes up Table Mountain was even laid down.
And beneath our feet is gold. Lots of it.
Since gold was discovered here in 1886, the Witwatersrand Basin has yielded over 50 000 tonnes of the stuff. Roughly a third of the gold ever mined in human history.
A third! Phew. That's a lot.
All that gold. Right beneath our feet.
But here's the part of the story that really gets me.
As you already know, in 1886, an Australian prospector named George Harrison discovered the main gold reef on the farm Langlaagte.
What you may not know is that he sold his claim for £10 and disappeared from the historical record.
Ten pounds. Good grief.
The man who stumbled onto one of the richest gold discoveries in history walked away with just enough money to buy himself a decent suit.
I wonder if he ever realised what he'd found.
And that got me thinking about my life.
How much gold have I walked away from? Opportunities I didn't recognise. People I didn't appreciate enough. Talents I never bothered to develop. Things that were right in front of me, I couldn't see for what they were worth.
And perhaps the more uncomfortable question is how much gold have I actually found, only to sell it for ten pounds because I didn't recognise its value?
I wonder how much is still lying beneath my feet, and yours.
Have a look at this video. It's about Johannesburg and its gold. But it got me thinking about a lot more than that.
You're the job
Jacques
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