REVIVAL IN GOLD MINING

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 289, 1 August 1932, Page 4

REVIVAL IN GOLD MINING

Bad times makes good prospectofs. Both in New Zealand and Australia in the past eighteen months there has been more alluvial gold-seeking than one would have believed possible. What may be called the parent industry had been relegated mostly to Chinamen, and even they had apparently given up the worldng of old ground as no longer worth while. Steady work in cities under favourable Arbitration Court awards had greater attraction for aduJts than work under-ground or thB | uncertainties of prospecting trips. It came to be accepted that practically all the payable ground that was approachable by man had been worked out. Gradually this is being shown a fallaey. The phenomenal increase in the price of gold — from £3 17s lOd to £6 10s 5d per oz. — has operated with the constriction of other avenues of employment to direct energy

and enterprise afresh into the gold mining industry. Old and new companies and syndicates are thoroughly re-examining abandoned fields and reopening mines which had attractive records in the days when they were producing. The highly speculative atmosphere which was associated with the finding of a new field is now largely absent. The price of gold and the reduction of costs are enabling the working of immense low grade deposits at a profit instead of at a loss. This is particularly true of Western Australia. There the 1929 yield of 377,176 oz. rose to 510,572oz. for 1931. In Victoria, as in New South Wales, South Australia, and Queensland, gold production during 1931 was j approximately doubled, while a j proportionate rate of inerease is being maintained this year. Extensive orders for new plant are being given, most of them to Australian manufacturers, thereby assisting greatly in the rehabilitation of secondary industries long under the blight of economic inertia. All this means new employment — the nation's greatest need — and not only for miners and the incidental labour of a busy goldfield, but reacting favourably in a score of directions among the producers of food-stuffs, household requirements, apparel, and building'materials. Might it not be, then, that Australia (the country which nearly forgot it had such vast auriferous resources) will again be assisted to its economic and financial feet by a gold min- | ing revival on a sound and comprehensive scale?