GOLD IN THE MOUNTAINS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 226, 24 September 1927, Page 8

GOLD IN THE MOUNTAINS.

In the days of the Marlborough diggings the treasure hunters used to sing as they packed their swags for the bush tramp: I'm off to that golden location. The Wakamarina for me. I think that hopeful chorus was from one of the versatile entertainer Thatcher's ditties. Maybe we shall hear something of the kind again when New Zealand startles the world with a big auriferous rush. One doesn't like to believe that all those days of gold have gone forever. The recent reports of gold discoveries in the rough country on the western side of Lake Taupo are possibly quite well founded. At any rate, traces of gold have been found in several of the river beds in that part of the country. In fact, these discoveries go back more than half a century. Between the rugged western shore""of Taupo and the upper parts of the Wanganui River and its tributaries there are ranges that to some of the old prospectors looked extremely likely to be gold-bearing country. The rocky hills around the Ongarue River and the Taringamutu have a remarkable similarity in character to the Upper Ohinemuri country. The watershed between the Ongarue-Wanganui side on the west and Taupo on the east is the mountain range extending from Pureora Peak southward to Tuhua and thence to the hills above Taumarunui. Pureora is very nearly 3800 ft high -and Tuhua is over 3000 ft. The district generally is known as Tuhua. The most direct access is by the road up the valley of the Taringamutu, a few miles north of Taumarunui. On the Lake Taupo aide the Waihaha and other streams flow from this range. The stream about which there has been most talk among gold prospectors in the past is the Pungapunga, which flows through the totara and rimu timber country into the Wanganui a few miles above Taumarunui. Fifty years ago there were reports of gold nuggets in this mountain creek. There was a story that the wife of a Maori chief who lived down that way wore a piece of golden stone about her neck like a tiki. It is said also that the pakeha-Maori, William Moffatt, who was shot by the Kingite Maoris at Taumarunui in 1880 for disobeying a mandate to keep out of that country, possessed knowledge about the place where gold existed in the Pungapunga valley, "and that the Kingites were resolved to prevent a white men's "rueh" into their territory. If Moffatt had exact information of this sort it perished with him. Old prospectors in the King Country, such as Barry—who spent many weeks with a half-caste guide in the Rangitoto Ranges and thereabouts—had theories that the matrix of the gold deposits would be found in such a range as Rangitoto or Tuhua, and that patient search would result some day in a wonderful find. The Maoris severely discouraged all such enterprise, and Barry, who went in from Kihikihi township in the 'eighties, was hunted for by a party of Ngati-Maniapoto; other gold hunters were turned back before they had gone far. Those obstacles to treasure seeking have long disappeared, and it is quite possible that systematic prospecting of the many streams up to their sources in the ranges would reveal something worth while. —TANOTWAT