GOLDMINER AND SCHOOLGIRL FRIENDS BY FREAK CHANCE

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28491, 22 January 1958, Page 9

GOLDMINER AND SCHOOLGIRL FRIENDS BY FREAK CHANCE

•Th. Press’’ Spwial Stniet

NEW. PLYMOUTH, Jan. 21. A New Plymouth schoolgirl. Pamela Williamson, aged 18. and a West Coast gold miner. Mr L. E. Powell, aged 55. of Charleston, became firm friends 18 months ago. Last week they met for the first time. The friendship began when Mr Powell picked up a bottle on Nine Mile Beach, near Charleston, in June, 1956. In the bottle was a message asking the finder to write to the sender, Pamela Williamson, New Plymouth. The message was dated May 15, 1956. Pamela had thrown the bottle into the Mimi stream and only by a "freak” chance did the bottle find its way to Nine Mile Beach. Normally sea currents that sweep northward up the West Coast would have prevented it from reaching Nine Mile, but in the five weeks between the time the bottle was thrown into the sea and the time it was found, strong northerly winds had been blowing on the coast. Mr Powell wrote to Pamela and they have corresponded regularly. TTiis year Mr Powell was booked to spend his holidays in North Auckland so he decided while he was in the North Island he would call on Pamela and her family.

Mr Powell and his brother operate New Zealand's last hydraulic sluicing and elevating gold mine on a beach about two miles from Charleston. There they recover gold as line as powder. But gold la becoming harder to get. ■ One of th* first things Mr Powell took from his suitcase when he arrived at the Williamson home, was a small cardboard box. in which was a solid 18carat gold brooch made from gold won at Mr Powell's mine.