"BLUE ASBESTOS"

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 13, 6 February 1942, Page 3

"BLUE ASBESTOS"

AUSTRALIAN INDUSTRY

"MAY YET ECLIPSE GOLD,"

"I believe that there is a definite possibility of crocidolite (blue asbestos) production eventually eclipsing the value of gold production in Western Australia," said the "VV.A. assistant-State mining engineer, Mr J. S. Foxall, in a report to the Minister of Mines, Mr A. 3H. Pantlon. (The value of the State's gold production to the end of August was £247,620,000).

M>r Foxall was speaking of the Hamersley Range field, the western end of which is about 70 miles south of Roebourne, a North-west port. Hamersley Range has a length of about 150 miles.

"After visiting most of the known exposures of blue asbestos on the Hamersley Range field," said Mi Foxall, "I am more than ever impressed with the possibilities of establishing one of the most profitable industries in Australia, and 1 am firmly convinced that Roebourne should be and must eventually be one of the principal asbestos distributing centres of the world."

Mr Foxall said that there were large areas that could be cheaply mined by open cutting, stripping and salvaging methods before actual underground mining need be undertaken, and that normal underground mining methods might, be profitably applied when open cutting was no longer feasible. Exposures had been located at various points over a distance of some 120 miles east-west and four miles nbrth-south. And there was a possibility that the as-bestos-bearing horizons were continuous over longer distances. He believed that, properly organised, the district would be able to meet all demands that might be made on it before the production el' blue asbestos during the next century.