ANOTHER GOLD STRIKE FAILS

Lake County Mail, Issue 33, 21 January 1948, Page 2

ANOTHER GOLD STRIKE FAILS

Queenstown Prospectors Amused

It is 12 months to-day since a Maori contractor in the secluded Mercury Bay township of Whitianga, produced a dazzling rich nugget and asked an old prospector' if it were gold. The circumstances under which he made the find are still unknown, but the appearance of this gold-studded quartz re-awakened a fever that was thought to have died in the district some 40 years ago or more. Now, after 12 months, the Maori has produced no more nuggets and flurries of hope for success are almost dead again. For older prospectors working claims out from Queenstown, the Maori’s find caused little excitement for they know that unreal success, uncertain strikes and short-lived fame made the Coromandel Peninsula the problem child of New Zealand mining many years ago. They were merely amused when they learned that people with hopes of pegging adjoining claims, watched the Maori’s every movement with close interest, and that within a few days the Whitianga Post Office was bare of forms used for applying for miners’ rights. These things they have seen within their own district, and such failures are so common that they do not make history.