HUTS FULL OF GOLD.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5203, 14 November 1927, Page 4

HUTS FULL OF GOLD.

NW AN OUNCE STOLEN. THEY TRUST EACH OTHER. Gold is everywhere in the huts of the lucky miners at Edie Creek (New Guinea). There are tea caddies of it; pickle bottles and jam jars full of it. It can be found in any odd place—on ricketty shelves in the log huts, pushed casually under beds, standing alongside the latest tin of jam or lump of damper.

The sight of so much gold lying about apparently upcared for, piqued the curiosity of' the Rev. F. R. Bishop, chaplain at Rabaul, who visited. Edie Creek with the Administrator (General Wisdom). He made inquiries among the miners concerning the possibility of? gold disappearing, while the owner’s were absent.

Mr Bishop, who reached Sydney by the Hon.toro>, said that so far as he could lexarn, not since the first rush to the Aeld. hiad a digger lost so much as announce of gold. “The feeling of trust,” said the Rev. Bishop, “is so strong among the miners , that when one of them recently missed from a shelf in his cabin half a big tea tin ofl gold he was sorely troubled.

“The gold was worth about £2OO, but, it was not the value of the loss that troubled him so much as the idea, that & white man on the field bad apparently stooped so low as to steal a mate’s hard-won gold. “But his confidence in the integrity of his mutes was misplaced,” said Mr Bishop. “A couple of days later he' found tfiie tin with the gold intact back on t he shelf from where it had disappear! »d. “One oi? the ‘boys’ lhad taken it in mistake. ,He thought he had had a real find, according to his values —he thought 1 ie had found a tin of sugar.”

Gold a t the rate of Gloz a day was spoken o if by Mr F. L. Thomas, who has just finished twelve months’ mining on t s>e field. But the 61oz represented Mr Thomas’ ’ best day. There were long periods wlhen not even an ounce could be won. Mt Thomas admitted, though, that h e had been successful. He thinks the field will be abandoned within three months by most of the 70 me) j now working alluvial claims, but he , forecasts a rich future for the compa ,nies working some of the lodes. Mr Thomas expects fresh discoveries of good payable gold, for many men whose claims at Edie Creek have peter efi out ;are now prospecting fur? ther afield.