For a few weeks, I’m sharing some pictures from a visit to Gold Reef City, a gold mining themed amusement park in Johannesburg, South Africa, back in September 2012. Last week I shared some pictures of the mining-themed entrance. This week I am sharing some pictures from the underground mine tour. The park is located on the site of an old gold mine. Now that water is no longer being pumped out of the mine in large quantities, most of the mine has flooded. However, the upper part of the mine is still accessible, and you can arrange to go on an underground tour with a guide. I highly recommend the tour. It’s fascinating to see the mine, and the guide that we had was extremely knowledgeable. My husband and I were the only people signed up for the early morning tour, so our guide spent extra time with us and even pointed out a few things that weren’t on the regular tour. Since my husband and I are in the gold mining industry ourselves, we certainly had plenty of questions. Our guide said that she appreciated our enthusiasm and said that, sadly, many of the schoolchildren who go on the tour are not very interested– they are much more interested in the rides and entertainment up top!
Without further ado, here are several pictures from the underground mine tour:
I blogged about the above mining posters previously.
Hope you enjoyed these pictures. Next week I’ll share some more pictures from Gold Reef City– from the gold brick pouring demonstration!
Georneys 
Heya i am for the first time here. I came across this board and I find
It truly useful & it helped me out a lot. I hope to give something back and help others like you aided me.
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Hi Evelyn,
A tchisa stick is a thin piece of pine with a thin stip of blasting gel twisted around it, sometimes draped with mud to make it burn slowly. The fuse ends were split and the resulting spurting fire ignited fuses easily and was difficult to extinguish, even in wet places. They were eventually outlawed because of the amount of carbon monoxide and nitrous gases they emitted. The term is also spelled “cheesa stick” and you can read about them in some of the old mining journals and handbooks. Info is from page 1046 of Vol. 105, No. 23 of the Engineering and Mining Journal which you can find online via google books — it has cool illustrations of them too — and just google “cheesa mining stick” for other info too.
Love your blog, adventures, and photos — thanks for sharing them!
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Ellen– Thanks so much for the information about tchisa sticks! Fascinating! There’s more to come soon from Gold Reef City. I’m so glad you like the blog!
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