URANIUM in the bush

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 933, 28 June 1957, Page 6

URANIUM in the bush

SIGHTSEERS stopping’ at Hawkes Crag in the lower Buller Gorge and looking down the rock wall at the foaming river, probably think that, apart from passing cars and perhaps a railcar across the river, there is no one else within miles. And if they look up at the rugged rain-forest-clad hills, with their bluffs and hanging mist, the feeling of isolation would be deepened. But they would be quite wrong, for every day a team of men sets out from a base camp high up in those hills, with scin-

tillometers, Geiger counters, and other instruments, in a search for that most modern dream of the prospectoruranium. On Tuesday, July 2, at 830 p.m., 3YZ will broadcast Search for U308, a half-hour documentary on these operations around Westpoint, produced by Roy Woodward, Senior Announcer at 3YZ, who made a trip to the area to gather first-hand material. Uranium was. first found in the Hawkes: Crag area in November, 1955

-a find which created great excitement throughout New Zealand, and boosted the sale of Geiger counters to an alltime high. This original strike was on the roadside on the southern side of the Gorge; the finds that are the subject of this documentary were made high in the hills across the river after months of systematic search. To do this searching, the prospectors at first travelled in the railcar from Westport each day, then climbed up a thousand-odd feet to the area of the

claim. This was time-consuming, but the alternatives were equally so. How, for instance, could one make a permanent camp, when to cut a track for packhorses would take months? How else carry heavy mining equipment, stores, tents and bedding, up to a suitable perch on the mountainside? Old miners in the Berlins area had a grandstand view of the way these questions were answered one Sunday last October, when a helicopter-the modern prospector’s packhorse-did the job in a few short hours. First a clearing of some 80 square feet had to be made in the bush for a landing site-two days’ work for some 12 men. Midday on that October Sunday saw a fire lit as a signal for the helicopter to make the first of its fourteen trips, each of which shifted some 500 pounds of gear from the loading ground on the Buller riverbed at Berlins up to the landing site (called "Benney’s’ Landing," after the Under-Secretary for Mines, C. H. Benney). This, incidentally, was said to be the first time that a helicopter had operated in steep, bush-clad country in New Zealand. From October until now the men on the claim have lived under canvas, but latest reports indicate that a hut is being built to provide more comfortable living quarters in the winter. Preliminary sampling to determine the extent and value of the deposits is still in progress, the work being done by the claimholders, Nelson Lime and Marble Ltd., with the co-operation of the Geological Survey. Among the speakers in Search forU308 are Tasman McKee, Managing Director of Nelson Lime and Marble, the company’s Chief Prospector Don Bullen, whose experience of Buller prospecting dates back to depression days, ‘and Dr E. Marsden, of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.