COASTERS LOOK AHEAD

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 780, 2 July 1954, Page 16

COASTERS LOOK AHEAD

URING the gold rush of the 60s, the South Island’s West Coast earned its other name-The Golden Coast. One square mile of land near Ross yielded no less than five tons of gold. Hokitika, now a modest town of 3000 souls, was a sprawling city of 50,000, with 100 pubs on its main street, Charleston, where the European Hotel now serves a populace of 42, was a lusty, brawling boom town of 20,000. But the "easy" gold ran out, and the Coast slipped quietly into other ways. Many of the diggers left to join rushes in other lands. Farming, timber milling and coal mining gradually came into their own as the chief industries of the province. There was, and is, still gold, but for the most part expensive capital equipment was required to win it. There were no easy pickings for the ordinary digger. The broad outline of the Coast’s economic history will form the introduction to a series of six panel discussions on the future of the region to be broad-

cast by 3YZ this Sunday, July 4. Entitled Looking Ahead, the discussions will be on the timber, agriculture and mining industries, and on _ tourists, transport and towns. Each subject will be dealt with by a different panel. That on mining, for instance, will be discussed by a Mines Department officer, a geologist, Westport’s Mayor, and a mine union secretary. The chairman in each case will be H. S. Blackmore, Adult Education Tutor-Organiser for the Coast. In the first programme he will give the historical outline and will introduce the leaders of the various panels, and in the concluding programme he will join with them in summarising the questions raised. Looking Ahead: First broadcast, 3YZ, 2.30 p.m., Sunday, July 4. The other programmes will be heard on successive