THE LURE OF GOLD

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1041, 4 August 1930, Page 8

THE LURE OF GOLD

SPURRED by the prospect" of rich claims, excited men are driving a quaint variety of vehicles toward Tarnagulla, a spot near Bendigo. Because a lucky trapper has picked up a stray nugget of gold in a forest reserve, it is hoped that the colourful. prodigal days of the stake, the spade and the pan will he revived. Australians who face raised taxes anjJ lowered incomes are clutching eagerly at this chance of restoring fallen fortunes liberally and speedily by supplying a hungry Commonwealth with unencumbered wealth. It is impossible at this juncture to hazard an opinion as to tlie wisdom of the new Australian rush. On the face of it, the chance appears a slender one, for a lone nugget does not necessarily indicate a gold-field. Further, the ground already has been worked over with a thoroughness born of the despair with which miners faced the apparent petering out of the earlier fields. Nevertheless Nature hides and reveals her treasures with queer caprice, and there is a possibility that a valuable area has remained undiscovered. All over the world inhabited lands have been robbed of their surface gold, and in New Zealand, as in Australia and elsewhere, the regular supply of the soft, yellow metal has become largely the business of organisations with capital sufficient to maintain dredging, sluicing and crushing machinery. It lias become necessary to dig or eat into the earth, and sift with meticulous care the comparatively small percentage of gold that is found in the subsoil formation of certain districts. . Is there a possibility that rich deposits of alluvial gold or rich stores of gold-bearing quartz remain to he discovered in New Zealand? Conservative experts reply in the negative, hut there are still those who seek constantly in the unexplored areas of the West Coast, confident that, some day, they will he rewarded beyond the dreams of avarice. In the meantime New Zealand’s production of gold bullion is declining steadily in common with a decline registered in practically every other country, bn 191!) it still topped the million mark, hut it has dwindled now to less than half a million a year despite the extravagant hopes raised by the Kawarau scheme at Queenstown. The hulk of New Zealand’s bullion production is now being supplied by quartz-mining which, in 1928, produced a total value of £.446,000 from Ohinemuri County, Coromandel, Reefton, Blackwater and in parts of Otago. Alluvial gold-mining accounted for £40,000 of the 1928 total and is limited to the West Coast and Otago, while dredging produced £65,000 from various rivers. In many cases time is proving that the extraction of gold by dredging, sluicing and crushing has inherent economic disadvantages which are rapidly outweighing the value of the metal %returned, yet, unless a startling find of surface gold is made, these provide the only means of maintaining supplies. Today Australians are succumbing once more to the lure, hut, whatever the result, it cannot be permanent. The golden future of both Australia and New Zealand will he measured in broad acres and factory chimneys rather than in silted rivers and dreary miles of rocky debris.