There's Still Gold in

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 666, 10 April 1952, Page 6

There's Still Gold in

UR’ newspaper headlines had begun to look quite disturbing. As far as one could gather there wasn’t a sizeable loan to be got anywhere, with the wrong approach you might even have trouble getting an unsizeable one, and if Mr. Horne had stepped off the boat just then-well! In the midst of it all a packet of scripts from the 3YA Talks Officer reached The Listener office. This Was -@éliy a case of stealing a march on listeners at large. With a sottm voce "Eureka!" we chalked up a. lunch-hour visit to the hardware merchants as item one in Orders of the Day. The fact is that in four short talks on Gold Prospecting for Beginners, which 3YA will broadcast during the next few weeks, W. F. Heinz will not only give an expert's _ advice on how to win gold-he’ll give a pretty good tip, too, on where to find it. Not that Mr. Heinz promises a quick fortune, mind you: "I’m not going to tell you there’s easy money in it," he says, "or that you're certain to. strike a nugget the size of your fist the first day." But he does say in all seriousness that there are still many areas in Otago and Westland where anyone who’s keen and tough can go in his holidays or on his university vacation. And if he takes a pan, a shovel, a miner’s pick and what Mr. Heinz calls "a good big stock of assistance and enthusiasm," it won’t be hard to find limited areas which it will pay to work. The gold prospector had his hey-day a hundred years ago, and the story of the great gold rushes which Mr. Heinz sketches in before getting down to pusineéss in his first talk is of something like a chain reaction running across the world. It was a prospector from the California rush of 1849-one of the old "forty-niners," as they were called-who noticed when he was in Australia in 1852 that the gravel near Ballarat looked remarkably like the gold-bearing gravel of California. And it was another of the forty-niners-he had tried both California and Ballarat-who, with nothing but his pans and a_ butcher’s knife. picked out seven otinces of gold

in the Waitahuna River area of Otago and started the New Zealand rushes. But interesting as the past is, Mr. Heinz doesn’t linger there, and is soon talking in a very down to earth fashion about what might still be done today in the way of small scale prospecting and claim working. He talks about the three qualities of gold that every prospector has to know and gives for a start a very general picture — just enough to whet the appe-tite-of the kind of place in which gold is likely to be found. ; Methods engage his attention after that-the simplest kind first. The old pan is still used for prospecting all over the world; "that’s the .way the old timers did it," says Mr. Heinz, "and if I had to travel light in the back country tomorrow to do a bit of prospecting that’s the way I'd do it.’ But once

you've found gold in the pan in paying quantities you’d want to use something better than that-a cradle or a "Long Tom," or one of "Tom’s" variations, ground-sluicing and paddocking. You'll get your instructions with a word thrown in about black sanding, in the second talk. "Where you'll find it" is the next topic. With a map in front of you you can draw the "golden line" through the most likely areas of Westland. Soon you'll be as much at home as any sourdough with "colour" and "blue bottom," and with Mr. Heinz you will be walking up creek beds and picking’ as eagerly as any geologist into the banks. Last of all will come the question of staking a claim-your "miner’s right," water rights and the rest of it, which you

won’t really need _ to worry about till you’ve struck something promising. But there’s something else you’ll want to hear in that last talk before you make your big decision. Mr, Heinz has already made certain things clear. The processes of getting gold are simple, no very expensive or elaborate equipment is needed, you don’t need a lot of skill, which will come with practice. But you’ve been waiting for a straight answer to the question: Can I make a good living at it? That comes right at the end. Mr. Heinz has always been interested in mineralogy and geology, particularly in the back country of Canterbury and Westland, where he

has done a great deal of field work and collecting, on other minerals as well as gold. He has made a_ special study of the goldfields of Westland. And he has had years of practical experience in small-scale and large-scale gold recovery. Gold Prospecting for Beginners, read by Robert Speirs, will be heard from 3YA at 7.15 p.m. on Fridays, April 18 and 25, and May 16 and 23. And the glitter of gold being what it is, these talks are sure to be heard later from other stations.