Bottle Crosses Tasman.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 December 1938, Page 4

Bottle Crosses Tasman.

Having floated across the Tasman Sea, a sealed bottle thrown overboard from the Matson liner Monterey on May 24 last was picked up recently by a child playing on the Muriwai Beach. The bottle is one of those thrown overboard regularly by masters of the Matson vessels to assist the Hydographic Office of the United States Navy with its marine survey work. This particular bottle was thrown overboard by Captain E. R. Johanson at a point somewhere off Twofold Bay, on the New South Wales coast near tire Victorian border, when the ship was on its way from Melbourne to Sydney.

Capital of New Guinea. At present there is no co-operation at all between the Governments of Papua and of mandated New Guinea, said Mr B. W. Collins, who has returned to Christchurch after nearly a year and a half of prospecting for oil in the New Guinea bush. The capital of the mandated territory was still at Rabaul, but there was talk of combining the governments of the two territories. The terms of the mandate would permit this. Mr Collins said, provided no native army was raised among the mandated tribes. Few of the planters worried about defence, he said, most of the whites being content to rely on Australia’s strength and on the new flying-boat base that was under construction at Port Moresby.

Restoring Gold Boom. That efforts should be made to renew activity on the Thames goldfields is the contention of a correspondent who knows the locality well (says the “Auckland Star.”) At one time, he states ,the business people at Thames launched the Thames Low Grade Ore Prospecting Association, which was well supported by Government grants. A large amount of money was spent, a great number of prospectors were employed, and a reasonable amount of gold was won. but the system, he claims, was radically wrong, beingcarried out on the “old-time" surface scratching. The general opinion of exIperienccd miners was that local geologists should have been consulted as to where quartz reefs were located, containing characteristics favourable to ore values. Work should have been concentrated on tlie most favourable sites. If that had been done, tlie glory of the "roaring seventies” might have been restored.