WARNING FROM AN AUCKLANDER.

Auckland Star, Volume XX, Issue 151, 27 June 1889, Page 5

WARNING FROM AN AUCKLANDER.

Mr James Thornton, formerly of Auckland, who is now Town Clerk of the Municipality of Normanton, Queensland, writes : " I have just received a copy of your issue of the4th May,jin which I see a 'local'stating that Messrs Purchas and Co. (a new firm since I left Auckland 15 months ago) are arranging to lay on a vessel for the SudEst Goldtield. I sincerely trust they have not succeeded in their enterprise, for it means not only certain loss, disappointment, hardship, and suffering, but probable destruction. When this rush first became known here and in Cooktown a few months back a great exodus took place, with the result that the few men that did not leave their bones there returned with shattered health, penniless and starving, all their little earnings gone. I do not know of a single instance of a man having made even his tucker. What little gold was obtained is not of the value stated, and I am very sceptical regarding the statement made that three men obtained there 50 ounces of gold in the space of five or six days. Had such been the case, there are plenty in thi3 town would have heard of it. There is too much evidence here, and sorrowful evidence too, that the supposed field is worse even than what is technically termed a ' duffer,' and the rush was got up by certain interested parties, at a time of great commercial depression, from selfish motives only. I hope that the Auckland miners will stick to their own country, and endeavour to develop the sure resources that undoubtedly exist there, and not rush on to dangers, difficulties, and privations they themselves know nothing of, but which others have found out, at the cost of their money and their lives.—l am, sir, yours truly, James Thorntox.

"I enclose a newspaper cuttingappearing in a recent issue of one of our local papers relative to the goldfield at St. Aignans. You will notice the last sentence. I may mention St. Aignan'sis oneof thesamegroup with Sud-Est. The writer states :—' The natives on Normanby Island are very hoetile. Eight men were murdered the other day, and he did not know how the prospecting party of five would get on amongst them. He said it'was better for a man to earn 10s a week and his tucker than to go there to make a little money in such an ungodly country. There is not one out of 150 that makes their exjwnses,' "