£65,000 MINING CLAIM

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28270, 7 May 1957, Page 6

£65,000 MINING CLAIM

Plaintiff’s Evidence Of Experience

(New Zealand. Press Association) WESTPORT, May 6. Evidence of his experience in hydraulic coal mining in the last 34 years, during which he had taken out four patents and had been invited to confer with the British Coal Board and engineering advisers to the United Kingdom Government in 1951, was given by one of the plaintiffs in the £65,000 mining case being held at Westport, ThomagßMoynihan.

Moynihan spoke of ventures with which he had been associated in the Buller and Ohura areas, including a mine at Mangakara (the first to be operated by hydraulic methods in the North Island), the Nile hydro at Charleston, hydro mines at Seddonville, Glencrag and Comet in the Buller Gorge, Cascade at the rear of Denniston, and Charming Creek near Seddonville, and latterly the Stockton mine which is the subject of the present litigation. Witness said that a loss of 25s a ton had been turned into a profit of 15s in the Fly creek mine at Stockton through use of hydro mining instead of the conventional system, and he took credit for some of that development, as he had advised the State on the project.