PROSPEROUS ERA

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 57, Issue 26, 10 November 1936, Page 3

PROSPEROUS ERA

CONDITIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA. HUGE AURIFEROUS AREA. \ (Per Press Association.) INVERCARGILL, November 9. “Owing to a purely fictitious element the rise in the price of gold, South Africa is enjoying an era of prosperity quite unprecedented even in that land of hectic ups and downs, said Mr L. Blackwell, M.P. for Kensington, a suburb of Johannesburg, who arrived at Bluff by the Marama last night. “ The margin of payability has sunk as low as 3dwt in certain cases, and the usual return is 6dwt or 7dwt. “This has not merely doubled, but has possibly quadrupled, the area of payable gold : bearing ground. No limit can be put to its geographical extent. It extends through the whole of the southern Transvaal and now to the northern, part of the Orange Free State. It is no exaggeration to say that the area of potential auriferous ground may equal in extent one of the two islands of New Zealand.” Mr Blackwell said he and his wife must have made a record trip from Cape Town to Milford Sound. They left South Africa, on October 10, landed at Fremantle, took the trans-continental train for Melbourne (a trip of four days), and then came to New Zealand. They are on a holiday trip in New Zealand ; but Mr Blackwell is representing the Union Government of South Africa at the Centenary celebrations at Adelaide, and expects to be back in Sydney on December 4.