SEARCH FOR GOLD

Hokitika Guardian, 3 September 1927, Page 2

SEARCH FOR GOLD

DIVER’S NOVEL METHOD. VENTURE NEAR QUEENSTOWN. DUNEDIN, September X. In the search for gold man has com ceived many methods of robbing Nature’s treasure store. Of these dredging, sluicing, tunnelling, and the time-honoured panning are only few. Perhaps the most novel and the most romantic method of gold mining is that being employed at present by Mr Wili'inm Vear and his party at the mouth of the Five Mile Creek, near Queenstown, Lake Wnkatipu. For many years Mr Vear was a deep-sea diver and bus been engaged in salvage and other work in the neighbourhood of Auckland and Sydney. Last winter he left his native waters, and in conjunction with the Port t halmers divers, Messrs Andrew Miller and Ricliar Arthur, went to the Kawnrau dam in order to find rock bottom for the coffer dams which were destined to leave the sites of tlie last two piers. Nos. f! and 7, high an dry.

This task having been accomplished the three divers with the aid of heavy boxes which were lowered into the water to them, carried out the actuai’ concreting of the coffer dams. Seemingly ..!c Vear developed a taste for fresh water because, after his work on the dam was finished, lie was only too pleased to fall in with the suggestion that he should dive for a number of wharf pile.-, which as the result of a storm, had been swept out into Wakatipu’s deep water in the vicinity of the Kawarau Falls’ shearing shed. Here again the diver was successful. AVitli the assistance of a motor launch from Queenstown he dived for the lost piles and hooked on to them a wire rope from a winding tractor on the first shore. The tractor did not rest. One by one tlie piles were drawn up on the beach, some of them from a depth of twenty fathoms.

Mr Vear’s latest exploit dates origiinai'iy from about this time last year In his usual enterprising manner be realised the possibilities of diving as a means of procuring gold from tlie mouth of the Five Mile Creek. Accordingly lie colics toil a party of workers and had bis gear transferred to the creek erected a camp, an commenced operations. Mr Bennetts, one of tlie party, to-day mentioned that tlicdher’s working time was six or seven hours a day and that he usually stayed under the water lor an hour nil a half or two hours at a stretch. As a start was made at 7.31). a.in. each day it was necessary in the dead of winter to thaw out the divers’ gear beforehand, lie considered that Mr Vear deserved great ci edit for the way in which he had stuck to his novel undertaking in the lace of many obstacles, and lie felt sure that tlie venture ultimately would prove highly success Ini'.