Fortunes by Accident

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 560, 12 January 1929, Page 14

Fortunes by Accident

STRANGE TURNS OF FATE’S WHEEL ... THE OLD CAB THAT PROVED A GOLD-MINE ... A FIELD OF AMETHYSTS

HE maker of a fortune usually credits his success to hard work and judgment. But I have come across several instances whet*3 at least judgment had nothing to do with it, says Jack McLaren, the well-known Australian traveller and writer. One is the case of a roundabout which was landed at Thursday Island —a cosmopolitan pearling centre off the north coast of Australia —for transhipment to Japan. Finding there were a few days to wait, the proprietor decided to erect his apparatus and mploy the interval by making it earn a little. Instead of a few days, he stayed three years. For the island was completely lacking in entertainments, and the col-

cured population lushed the roundabout as they would have rushed nothing else, riding it twenty hours a day, men, women and children, often three to a horse. Fare-collectors had to be put on in relays. The proprietor told me that so many were the repairs necessitated by the excessive working that before the end of the second year the whole affair had been twice completely rebuilt. Those three years gave him far more money than he had thought to earn in the whole of his life. The Joke of the Island Another is the case of a resident of a certain small island town near New Guinea, where tile only ground fit for wheeled traffic was the three-hundred-yards-long main street, who returned from a visit to an Australian city with —a cab! It was an antiquated four-wheeler, and the resident explained that he had bought it at an auction room during a time of inebriety, and finding it impossible to resell it had brought it back home with him as the next best thing. For a time the joke of the island, tho cab stood at the rear of his premises; then one day, to point the joke further, a horse was obtained. and the outfit sent to ply for hire. The effect was electric. The cab was besieged. Japanese pearl-fishers, Philipino traders, paid-oft' plantation natives in town to await shipment to their homes, all kinds of people, clamoured to be driven back and forth along the three-hundred-yards-long street. They willingly paid a shilling a head each way. Often a group would make several ■successive trips, singing and shouting the while, and halting for drinks ar. the various hotels. They are, i be-

lieve, still doing it. That tojvn is one «if the most prosperous in the South Seas, but I have it on good authority that the cab is the best-paving investment there. Then there is the case of a com-pany-promoter, who took up a prospecting area in which there were not known to be metals of any kind, announced that it contained large quantities of tin, floated an alleged company, and set out to sell the shares. To give au air of genuiueness to it all. lie engaged a number of workmen and a manager to “open up” portion of the ground. But the shares fell flat. Try as he would, he could not sell more than a very few. Then just as he was on the point of J recalling his workmen and giving up the whole thing in disgust, there came from the area a cable to the effect that a fine lode of best-quality tin had been discovered! To-day those shares are worth a fortune, for the lode developed into one of the best tin-producing mines in the country. I am afraid it all sounds a little Immoral. Within Touching Distance I myself accidentally came within touching distance of what one day may be a fortune. Wading a coastal river in a little-known part of Western New Guinea. I was severely stung on the foot by a “stone-fish” —a particularly poisonous creature which lies hidden among the stones and mud of the bottom. Seeing that the remedies from my portable medicine-chest were not doing much good, some local natives suggested that they should go and get what they called a “Burning Stone.” It appeared that “Burning Stones” were to be found some distance inland, that they were of great value iu reducing swellings and pain such as I suffered, and that their name came from the fact that they would burn as easily as wood. Having little faith in native remedies, X told them not to bother. Later I wished most devoutly that I had let them bring me those stones, for afterwards a prospecting party came across them and found them to be pure shale—a kind of oil-laden ore. There are various experimental oil i wells in that locality now, and any day one of them may prove to be a “gusher.” Jewels in Abundance j Another time, in one of the remotest I of the Solomon Islands, accident put j me in the way of what I thought was I a fortune. Weather-bound at a village, I sought to relieve the boredom of a lonely evening by attending a tribal dance. The dancers were painted and decorated, according to custom, and in the armlets of one I noticed some gleaming, lavender-blue jewels. Inquiries as to where they had come from brought ready replies, and when the weather lifted I made an expedition to the spot—a day’s journey inland. The jewels were In abundance; a single day’s sifting of the ground resulted in hundreds of them; and I began to thing of Rolls-Royces and things. But when I shipped them away for expert opinion and sale, they proved to be merely what are called “oriental amethysts”—near-jewels, worth a few shillings a pound, and used chiefly for 1 the manufacture of tinsel!