Melville Koppies Nature Reserve
Quartzite ridge reserve holding a five-hundred-year-old iron-smelting furnace amid Highveld grassland trails.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Melville Koppies Nature Reserve traces two brothers named Geldenhuys who dynamited this ridge in the 1880s hunting for gold and found nothing, unaware of what sat beneath their boots. You'll hear how archaeologist Revil Mason returned in 1963 and uncovered a small clay furnace, and what the charcoal inside told him about the farmers who worked this hill centuries earlier. Look for the blast holes from the 1880s search, then find the furnace close beside them.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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