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The farm Nooitgedacht lies on the left bank of the Vaal River some 40 km from Kimberley,on the right of the road to Barkly West. Driekopseiland is a farm on the Riet River about 64 km south-west of Kimberley.
During the remote geological epoch that included the Carboniferous Period, about one-ninth of South Africa was covered by an immense ice sheet with extensive glaciers. These ancient glaciers moved outwards from the old mountain areas, mainly in the Transvaal and South West Africa and in their passage over the ground picked up boulders and rubble which scoured and scratched the rock surfaces they passed over. These scratched surfaces are now exposed and resting on and round them is the rubble and solidified mud which was deposited when the ice melted. The pebbles and boulders of the rubble are also scarred and facetted, and they include so-called “erratics”, blocks of rock derived from distant areas and carried down by the moving ice. All these phenomena as well as others of a more technical nature can be clearly seen and studied at a number of places in what is now this dry subtropical region of South Africa. The exposures on Nooitgedacht and Driekopseiland are excellent examples of such “glacial pavements” and have been preserved by the Historical Monuments Commission with the willing co-operation of the owners.