GOLD IN WESTLAND

Hokitika Guardian, 8 December 1931, Page 7

GOLD IN WESTLAND

DREDGES AND DiCGERS WIDESPREAD ACTIVITIES Some quaint sidelights are east upon gold-seeking in Westland by an Aucklander who has just returned from a trip to that district. The industry hrs revived there of late on both small and large scale. The introduction of modern methods is enabling certain old areas to he profitably reworked by dredging, and the present high price of gold, allied to the unemployment, has much' increased the number of individuals and families who make a livelihood by washing gold along the beaches. When the Aucklander paid a visit to the dredge at Five-Mile Beach Okarito, South Westland, he found it made a most interesting discovery. It had actually dredged up the remains of a hotel dating from the fine old Bret Harte days of the ’sixties and ’seventies. The expanse of sandhills on which the dredge has been working for the past live months once carried a large population of diggers, and the hotel ministered to their needs. No sign of it remained on the surface but on reaching the site the dredge began to bring up scores of empty bottles and some sawn timber,

Later other relics came to light—a gojdern sovereign, several silver coins_ some small trinkets, and something rather pathetic, a child’s shoo, very stoutly made as if it wore the work of •a goldfields cobbler, However, the bottles were the most conspicuous remains and the visitor saw many of them floating in the pool around the dredge. The hotel, which probably was only a wood and iron shanty, had yielded to the forces of wind, wether and drifting sand many years ago.

MANY “BEACHCOMBERS”

The dredge which excavates to a depth of about 22 feet, has so far covered 31 acres, and has been •winn--80 ounce to 8o ounce a week. It has struck some quite rich patches on ground where £he old diggers might have be.n expected to leave nothing. The gold is for the most part extremely fine. The machinery of the dredge is an unusual mixture of old and new. Some of it represents salvage from old dredges in the district, and the rest is modern.

Tho “'beachcombers,” or “blacksanders on North Beach, also near Okarito, were a most interesting study. The visitor found the whole length of the beach divided into claims, which were being worked by men in ones and twos, or by families, the women taking a full share of the toil.

This method of gold-winning is an Old one which has never been extinct on the West Coast since the early days, Cold has been carried down the rivers for ages and deposited on the sen-bed. Storms wash up some of it on to tl;e beaches, mixed wifi) heavy black sand. The deposits ni'O usually buried under layers of lighter grey Hand. The “beachcombers” watch until rough weather uncovers an area of black sand, and then shovel it into heaps above the high-water mark for treatment later. They have to hurry lest the next tide should cover the deposit again. Modes of treatment vary very much according to the means of the digger. All the men are adepts nt testing out a deposit by washing sand on a longbandied shovel instead of in a dish. A minute or two suffices to show the “colour” of gold if it is there.

'Some claim holders were found to have quite ambitious plants, with small petrol engines to pump water from near by lagoons; others were content with “cradles” and similar devices of the most primitive kind. Most were well content if the days washing yielded 30s worth of gold, but perhaps that was above the average.

RIMU FLAT DREDGE The visitor struck the other end of the scale when he went to see the huge electrically-driven dredge at Rimu Flat. This has lately been altered and improved, and now excavates to a depth of 45 feet, advancing half a mile in three weeks. He was much impressed with the power of the bucket-iine, which lifts boulders as large as a table and deposits them among the other tailings with the greatst ease.