Stealth will definitely be required as this is a popular tourist atrraction and there are always muggles around. If you need some extra help to find the cache, look at the spoiler photo.
The following is an edited version of an excellent article about the Union Buildings that was published in the Saturday Star newspaper in 2014:
"When Sir Herbert Baker finished constructing the iconic Union Buildings, his clients were in raptures. No less a person than the Governor, William Palmer, the second Earl of Selborne who oversaw the creation of the Union of South Africa, would declare: “People will come from all over the world to wonder at the beauty of the site and admire the forethought and courage of the men who selected it.” He wasn’t wrong.
Sir Herbert Baker drew up the plan in 1908 and building started five months after the Union of South Africa was formed on May 31, 1910. It was finished in three years by a veritable army of 1 265 artisans and labourers. They laid 14 million bricks and used an eye-watering amount of sandstone, granite and cement, and forests of Rhodesian teak and stinkwood for the trimmings indoors. It was the biggest public building in the southern hemisphere at the time.
The Union Buildings sit on Meintjieskop, a ridge on the east of the city of Pretoria. They could well have been on Muckleneuk ridge on the western border of the city or even where the City Hall stands today, but Baker chose Meintjieskop, complete with its working quarry, which he craftily converted into an amphitheatre, flanked by its two 95m wings.
Baker was inspired by the acropolises he had seen in Greece and Turkey, where he studied classical architecture. It was an era of empire, of thinking big and Baker wanted his design to be just that and underscore the British architectural genius of Sir Christopher Wren’s dictum that a public building should be a national ornament and a focal point for the nation. The two wings represented Afrikaans and English, joined by the amphitheatre for important national ceremonies. In 1913, racial harmony meant between Boer and Brit but the buildings are remembered across the world today for two separate and different reasons: the inauguration of Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first democratically elected president and his lying in state there 19 years later.
The landscaped terraces that lead down towards the city reflect South Africa’s history. There are statues of the great Afrikaner statesman Louis Botha, and his Boer comrade JBM Hertzog; there’s one of only three Delville Wood memorials, exact replicas of the one in France and even one of the last remaining Long Tom cannons, standing sentinel over the city. There’s also a police memorial, in remembrance of police officers who died doing their duty.
But the best monument of all is the inspirational 9-metre statue of Nelson Mandela that stands directly below the amphitheatre at the foot of the terrace, fittingly commanding the entire complex. His arms outstretched towards the city, he welcomes the world to the Union Buildings."
Acknowledgement: "A true SA marvel of the times" by Kevin Ritchie, Saturday Star, 12 August 2014.