With its dark, subterranean passageways, it looks a little like an underground film set for one of those old James Bond movies. Opened in 1976 and built to last 300 years, the Orange-Fish Tunnel remains one of South Africa’s most outstanding engineering...
One of the Karoo’s more obscure tourism attractions lies 150 metres underground, smells faintly of fish and is open to the public for only a few weeks a year.
The Orange-Fish Tunnel becomes a fleeting tourism attraction in midwinter when the massive cloverleaf intake roller-valves at Gariep Dam are closed. The constant roar of the water subsides to a trickle while a maintenance team from the Department of Water and Sanitation comes in. Teebus and Koffiebus are two of the most distinctive hills in the Eastern Cape Karoo. Image: Chris Marais
Engineers used lasers – then a really cutting-edge technology – to keep the tunnel in line as the miners dug through solid rock. The construction project – too huge to entrust to one civil engineering contractor – was split into three. There is also a canal linking the Fish River with the Sundays River, flowing through the citrus orchards near Addo and Kirkwood.
Every week, 14,000 tons of bulk cement were brought in, first via 40-ton rail tankers to three small railway stations around the tunnel, and then trucked by road. In midwinter, Water Affairs closes the giant cloverleaf intake valves at Oviston to allow maintenance on the tunnel. Image: Chris Marais Dave van Heerden, now living on Johannesburg’s West Rand, was a young boy when his father started work at Midshaft.
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