After the madness of the Drakensberg Mountains the weary travellers returned to Barberton and the relative safety of Fountain Baths. Fiona and Mark bid a farewell and Craig and I were left to our own devices. Word to the wise; if you don’t have a car, don’t go to Barberton. The town had given up it’s diamonds within five minutes of us arriving and we pretty much mooched about all week apart from a couple of field trips which I shall describe in due course. Lynne and Joyce seem to have settled into a lifestyle that revolves around lunch and Craig and I quickly fell into a similar 'Lunching Ladies'. role. I have never been to a place that sucks the life out of you so quickly as Barberton. We managed to escape one afternoon, in fact we escaped so far we even left South Africa altogether. Yes sir, we broke the border and ran to Swaziland.
Swaziland isn’t without corruption and of course we had to bribe the border guards by buying them a new TV before they let us in.
This was just one of many brides we had to make before we were allowed safe passage
How does one describe Swaziland? A land of beauty, untouched by development, rustic roads lead into untamed forests, this country of beautiful waitresses, extensive menus, charming and ethnic gifts and goods. The wild and unblemished land of the Swazi. It stretched out before us, offering us all its pearls and dreams. We responded and made much good our time in Swaziland. Well we had to, the border post back to South Africa closed at 4.00pm. An hour and a half in Swaziland passed like a whirlwind of emotion, but at least I got a new stamp in my passport.
The culinary delights of Swaziland: Yesterday's Today's and tomorrow's specials. In fact, the specials for the rest of the week...
Another highlight of Barberton life was a trip out Gold Panning with Danny. Danny had made his fortune with Barberton gold and lost it all again in Gin Soaked Fleshpots during the roaring ‘30s. His way of combating old age and dwindling resources was by teaching idiot tourists (i.e. Craig and I) how to pan for gold. This was a task that we both failed at miserably. Had this been our own source of income, both Craig and I would have starved to death before you could say ‘there’s gold in them there hills!’
'Please don't hit me again!'
After fruitlessly scratching about for about an hour, Danny tired of our failings and took us on a short tour of the entrances to the old mines, he showed us where men had carved out the living rock with tooth and claw. We saw the coco pans used to carry out the half-ton Gold Nuggets that Barberton was famed for. This was all a bonus to the gold panning tour and we ended up staying much longer than we should have. Lynne and Joyce had the police out looking for us, in case we had been raped or kidnapped, an every day occurrence in Barberton.
Once the richest Mine in the world, Danny’s workings had run dry and left him penniless living off the kindness of tourists…
Now we come to the highlight of the time in Barberton; the field trip to the ‘archaeological’ site of Adam's Calendar. Located just outside Kaapschehoop, this Ancient site of standing stones was ‘discovered’ when a rather careless pilot crashed his plane into the side of the hill. Obviously still mentally scarred from his ordeal, he recruited the help of the local Village Idiot to do some serious Archaeological research into the origins of this place. We met our guide, Enosh. I knew something was afoot when he didn’t have his own transport and had to ride with us in the car. The first stop off the main road was at a ‘standing stone’ which, Enosh informed us, had been moved from it’s original position within the ‘Calendar’. Who had moved it and why wasn’t made clear, a theme which was to run through the entire tour.
This was a ‘Male’ stone, he told us. How that was ascertained I have no idea, but things started to go downhill rapidly when we were told we could hug the stone if we liked.
‘Hug the stone!’ ‘But I don’t want to hug the stone!’ ‘Hug the stone or I will stab you!’
We stopped further up the dirt road and Enosh indicated into the valley below. Do you see those three hills down there?’ he asked us. ‘Well, Michael Tellinger has the belief that they are not hills at all but Pyramids…’ Enosh dropped the bombshell. We stood aghast. What the fuck did he just say? ‘Those hills are not hills, but they are pyramids. Not only are they pyramids, but they are a reflection of Orion's Belt here on Earth.’ I felt like I had been taking crazy pills. Nothing made sense anymore. These revelations were too much. How much was this tour costing me? Shaken and dazed we continued. The next stop was a little way along the path at the ‘altar’. A dry stone built structure, that Enosh assured us was the top of the Queen of Sheba's tomb. It had been built 75,000 years previously after humans overthrew their gold seeking tyrannical alien rulers.
Yes. Read that bit again:
It had been built 75,000 years previously after humans overthrew their gold seeking tyrannical alien rulers.
The evidence for this? Well for a start there was a tree that had taken root in the top of the structure. This species of tree, Enosh told us, was very slow growing and that it was growing out of the structure means we could date when the structure was no longer in use. I asked how slow growing? Enosh told me the tree had been alive for about forty years.
I’ll just put a pause here to let you take this in.
A structure was dated to 75,000 years old on the basis that a tree was growing out of it. A tree that was no older than forty years.
Further to this empirical dating evidence, ‘expert’ psychics had said that the structure was a sacrificial altar that was in line with the rest of the calendar, further along the track. To lessen the damage caused by wild horses a fence had been thrown up around the ‘monument’. The money must have run out as the fence only ran around three quarters of the structure. Enosh also pointed out the ‘sacrificial path’ that ran from a group of stones along the cliff edge towards the ‘altar’. Now, having working for nearly a decade in archaeology, I deduced that the altar and sacrificial path were nothing more than something tied into the mine workings close to the other stone structures. I felt the path was nothing more than a modern pipe trench and the altar something to do with collection of water or an air escape. The fact that the mining operations closed down about sixty years ago may tie in with the fact that the tree began growing out of the 'altar'. But what the fuck do I know, I’m no expert Psychic, after all. I started to espouse my theories at the first group of stones that were in a dip in the cliff edge. We were accompanied by a group of gullible Rock Spiders and my sound archaeological theories fell on deaf ears. There were some large Dolomite rocks that Enosh suggested had been moved to the site from a few kilometres away in ancient times. I suggested they may have been moved out of place when the mine operations were in full swing. The lead Rock Spider asked me how could they move such big rocks in the 19th century when they only had horses and wagons. I said, well how were the pyramids built? She said no one knows. I said ‘I have a reasonable idea it was something to do with Nubian Slaves.’
'I think the pyramids were built by aliens'
'I think you're an idiot'
We moved on to the top cluster of stones, which amounted to a group of stones laid on the floor. I could see no obvious alignments but we were told this was another group of important rocks. Looking back across the cliff edge we could see the sacrificial Altar and Adam’s Calendar before us. Enosh told us about the importance of the alignments of these three ‘structures’ and that a straight line ran between all three. When I pointed out that, quite obviously, they were not actually in line, Enosh explained it away by saying soil erosion had moved the structures out of line. The problem with this theory was that the centre structure was UPHILL from the central line. Again, with nearly a decade in dealing with archaeology, I have yet to see uphill erosion.
Me completely baffled by the lack of any evidence to support any of Tellinger's theories
At the main central stone structure we were told that psychics had identified sacrificial stones and ‘birthing’ stones within the group of rocks. The birthing stone lay at the edge of the cliff and I was quite sure that most women wouldn’t want to go through the trauma of childbirth with the entire valley bottom watching. But again, my reasoning was dismissed as blinkered thinking. Apparently a pot sherd had been found in this group of stones and was dated by the Barberton museum as about 1500 years old. Michael's conspiracy theory was that since the pot sherd had been taken into care of the museum and not given back to his female cohort (whom had found it) it meant the museum was in league with covering up the truth that all these structures dated back to 75,000,000,0000,000yrs ago, or whatever number you want to pluck out of the air. Nothing to do with the fact that museum probably just wanted to conserve and catalogue an ancient artefact. I also think that the biggest conspiracy here is why Michael tells us he is twenty years old on his Profile...
The struggle of attempting to get people to understand his outlandish theories had taken it's toll on young Michael...
I was quite happy to have said the middle structure was an ancient monument, probably constructed by an unidentified tribe or group of tribes from the area at some unknown date for a some unknown purpose. It was in no way 75,000yrs old, neither was it connected to any anti-Alien uprising or Egyptians who had come south to bury their queen, which seemed to be another theory floating about. Enosh was very unclear about several things. The problem with the tour, besides paying nearly thirty pounds to be insulted, was that Enosh was only a guide and was only saying what he’d been told to say. I couldn’t be too hard on him, but Michael had not been available that day to take us, so a lot of my comments went unanswered.
'So Enosh, tell me again how you can date a structure to 75,000 years old with evidence from a 40 year old tree?'
'Wow! Look an Eagle!'
On the way back to Barberton, Craig and I spotted hundreds of other Pyramids, also known as hills...
OK there is only one more part of Africa left, then the final part of Italy and then I can get back to telling you about the mundainity of my daily life...
