Lonehill
There's a story that if the top boulder of the Lonehill Koppie were dislodged, all the whites in the country would leave. It's a latter-day version of an Anglo Boer War tale: that if the Boers dislodged the rock, the British would lose the war and leave South Africa.
Whatever version you fancy, the top boulder, which balances on several larger boulders, is still firmly there and although some whites have emigrated, most are just as firmly still in the country.
The Lonehill Koppie is beautiful - it stands out as a lone koppie on the northern border of the city's suburbs, some 28 kilometres north of the city centre, and is a reminder of what Johannesburg used to look like before it was settled: rocky veld with small streams trickling through it, dotted with shrubs, small trees and knee-high grasses. Guinea fowl and porcupines used to roam the area around the Koppie, and it's now populated with dozens of dassies. There's a small dam, called Lonehill Loch, around 200 metres north of the Koppie, a popular walking spot for local residents.
The Koppie is largely made up of large boulders, called tor rocks, very old rocks, with trees and indigenous shrubs now almost obscuring the rocks except for the very top boulders. The room-size boulders of Lonehill have a special quality to them, their towering height and massive shapes overwhelming one on the short hike to the top.
These days it is surrounded by cluster home estates & developments, in places right up to its perimeter. It is a plot of around 20 acres, with veld surrounding the koppie, which is around 80 metres high. It is fenced and locked, but unlocked on the weekends, allowing hikers and picnickers to climb to the top, or just lay out a picnic blanket in its surrounding grassy area.
It is an extremely significant site - it has three Stone Age furnaces in the veld below the Koppie. These were excavated in the 1960s by Professor Revil Mason, formerly head of archaeology at Wits University.
The furnaces were covered again by Mason, partly to protect them but partly also because there was no funding to develop the site, which would need a protective structure built around them.
Mason estimates that the furnaces date to around 1600, the same period as the Melville Koppies furnace. Bits of slag have been found near the site of the furnaces, on large flat rocks with indentations in them, obviously used for grinding.
Near the furnace site is another area where pottery was manufactured, fenced like the furnace area.
Half way up the Koppie there's further evidence of these early pastoral people - remnants of stone walls that would have been a kraal and living areas.
In the early 1990s the Lonehill community drew up a plan to build a museum and an Ndebele village just below the Koppie. Nothing came of it as the funds needed would have run into the millions.