TAKAKA HILL MINERALS

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28415, 23 October 1957, Page 10

TAKAKA HILL MINERALS

Farmer’s Finds Commented On

(New Zealand Press Association) NELSON, Oct. 22.

The Takaka Hill, known as Nelson’s marble mountain, has been found to contain a radioactive mineral not yet identified, the first vermiculite <a brown mica) ever found in New Zealand and scheelite, the ore of tungsten.

The significance of these discoveries by a farmer-prospector was commented on by the Dean of the School of Mines and Metallurgy at the University of Otago (Professor Gordon J. Williams) in the course of the 1957 Cawthron Lecture which he delivered in Nelson last night. Professor Williams said he wished to pay a tribute to Mr C. J. Sixtus, of Canaan, on Takaka Hill, who in the course of a year had made three quite, new discoveries in the area around his farm.

First, he had found scheelite, which was used for electric light bulb filaments, for hardening steel, and for producing tungsten carbide.

This was, as far as he knew, the first discoyery of scheelite in Nelson and Mr Sixtus had dug out some very beautiful specimens from reefs which were close to the granite marble contact, said Professor Williams. Secondly, Mr Sixtus had found a radio-active mineral. He still did not know what it was, said Professor Williams, but it was significant because such minerals often occur at granite marble contacts.

Thirdly, he had found for the first time in New Zealand the mineral vermiculite, which expanded tremendously when it was heated to form a porous mass greatly in -demand for insulating purposes. All these discoveries, like the uranium in the Buller area, were in their very early stages, but they had all been made in the last two years after a lapse in prospecting since the gold days. “Surely this is good news and a good augury for the revival of mining here,” said Professor Williams.