OLD GOLD MINES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 125, 19 January 1932, Page 7

OLD GOLD MINES

PRODUCE AGAIN i , , NEW PROCESS MAKES POSSIBLE WORKING OF ABANDONED DIGGINGS. AUSTRALIAN DEVELOPMENT. SYDNEY, Dec. 28. Developments indicate tbat the gold deposits of the Commonwealth are neither exhausted nor even fully explored. Abandoned mines are being opened up again, and new mines floated. In the rushing, romantic days around 1851, ten years saw the quadruplication of Australia's population. Crews deserted their ships as they reached port; cities lost the bulk of their male population as the people joined in the rush to the scene of rich finds, where the earth was cut and mauled and tunnelled so that it might give up the precious yellow metal. Men won fortune s in a day and just as easily lost them in an orgy of reckless spending ard gambling. Later big mines reared ' heir spindly columns and deep shafts were sunlc, winning wealth amounting to £630,000,000. Since those days, although many mines have continued to produce reduced yields, others have been abandoned as supposedly worked out. Several mines at Kalgoorlie, the famous gold town of the west, are still being operated. Coolgardie, an equally famous neighbouring gold town, is more or less desertad. It looks back to the days when humanity literally surged over it in the search for gold, when trains unable to cope with the human freight carried gold seekers on the tops of the- carriages. To-day gold is again calling, partieular ly in Western Australia, where four-fifths of Australia's gold is produced. New interest is heing taken in several of the 13 mines which comprise Kalgoorliehs "golden mile," with its long line of dumps, factory. buildings and tall black chimneys. New buildings are heing ereeted. New mines are being opened in various places and many of them, Phoenixlike, the arising out of the ashes of their former selves. Formerly, mines from which large quantities of gold were extracted were abandoned because refractory ore was reached, from which the gold could not be profitably extracted. Only the richer grades of ore were treated because of economic factors in production. Now natural science takes a hand. What is known as the flotation process has been introdueed. The ore is pulverised and flushed with water containing eucalyptus oil, one pound of oil being used to one tone of ore. The oil, which is made from the leaves of the eucalyptus tree, apparently has an affinity with the gold, and the small, dust-like particles aie buoyed up with the oil to the surfaee of the water. On being run off the gold is caught. The eost of this process is several shillings per ton lower than the old process of roasting the ore. In Western Australia, 700 miles from Perth, at Wiluna, out on the fringe of civilisation, in saltbush and mulga country, a new Eldorado is being developed on these lines.