Valuable Beach Sands On Australia’s Coasts

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28013, 6 July 1956, Page 8

Valuable Beach Sands On Australia’s Coasts

(From a Reuter Correspondent)

SYDNEY. Every breaker that rolls in from the Pacific to thunder on Australia’s eastern coastline promises added national wealth from much wanted minerals dumped in beach sands. Their uses range from aircraft building to naval smoke screens. New uses, new processes are creating ever-increasing interest in what quantities and quality of rutile, zircon and other minerals in short supply Australia can win from more than a thousand mile stretch of beaches and sand dunes extending from south of Sydney in New South Wales to beyond the Queensland capital of Brisbane. Already the beach sands have made substantial contributions to the national economy. Last year Australia exported nearly £A4 million worth of rutile and zircon concentrates and. according to National Development Minister Senator William Spooner, there is production ahead for up to 20 years from high-grade deposits alone. Ways are being conjured to work profitably low-grade deposits and, if this is achieved. Senator Spooner said they would yield more concentrates than all the known high-grade resources. Australia is now the world s leading producer of these concentrates and the east coast beaches are easily the world's richest in zircon and rutile content, the Minister said. Basking Australians, lazing in countless thousands on beaches with thoughts only on the depth of sun tan developing on exposed skin, have toyed with muti-coloured particles not knowing they were dribbling economic wealth through their fingers. And now they have been made aware that there are dollars and golc to be won from the sand they wanl it to remain rather than have benches in popular resorts “processed” for commerce. Approaches made to various loca controlling authorities for rights tc "mine” any beach where there are mineral deposits brought strong resistance from sections of the public who forecast that it would mean the

end of swimming, surfing and sunbaking attractions for 50.000 people who flocked to one beach in question at week-ends and on holidays. Businesses whose economy had been built over the years on the needs of great crowds saw’ disaster ahead. I Life savers were organised to march through Sydney in protest against a, plan to work the popular Maroubra beach, eight miles .from Sydney. ; Royalties Promised From promised royalties, the local council envisaged £lOO,OOO intake for ts yearly beach maintennnee bill but, in face of opposition, the plan was put on one side. Assistant Under-Secretary for Mines, Mr C. S. Mulholland, announced that to date licences to mine had been granted only for beaches not regarded as holiday resorts. It would appear that opposition will not change unless public opinion can be convinced that beach mining can go hand in hand w’ith normal beach uses and that after sand is separated from its commercial content it is returned to the beaches whiter than before rutile and zircon were taken from it. Meanwhile there are many commercial enterprises operating higher up the coast, sucking up the sand on beaches, bulldozing overburden from sand dunes high above the waterline to reach mineral deposits, washing, separating and returning the stripped sand. Zircon, rutile and their derivates and compounds from Australian beaches go to the United Stales, United Kingdom, Western European countries and Japan. Day and night the seas smashing against the coast are returning to the shore the mineral wealth washed down in rivers over the centuries I from the hinterland to be used all over the world in metal, ceramic, electrical, paint, welding and other industries. Its spectacular use is in aircraft building, for rutile is the basic material for manufacture of the wonder metal itanium. In peace it plays its part in sky writing; in war it is the base for naval smoke screens.