South Africa, Messina

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Overland Adventure Travel » South Africa » Messina

			This is the northernmost town in South Africa, renowned for the breathtaking size and splendour of its Baobab trees which are sometimes called "upside down trees" because they appear to have grown the wrong way up. This hot and dry area has a long history of iron and copper mining, which was all done with very basic tools by the Musina women (from where the name Messina is derived). They dug the shafts and used baskets to haul the ore to the surface. It was then crushed with a hammer and fed into a furnace worked by leather bellows. The molten iron and copper was poured into moulds in the ground and used as a bartering commodity (money) throughout the subcontinent. The Musina mines were abandoned sometime in the 19th century for reasons unknown, and it was in the early 20th century that the next miners arrived to disturb the ground once again. A man named John Grefell was prospecting in Zimbabwe and heard about the ancient mines just across the border in South Africa. After the Anglo-Boer war, he carried out a detailed survey and found that the area, and in particular the farm Berkenrode, was “a veritable mountain of copper”. At first, the copper was carried out by wagons to wherever the railhead had reached at that point, and in May 1914 the railway finally reached Messina. The Messina Development Company enlarged both the mines and the town and another period of profitable production ensued.

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