Shantytown praised

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32540, 25 February 1971, Page 10

Shantytown praised

(Staff reporter accompanying the Minister)

His admiration for the private enterprise that had developed Shantytown, a re - created gold-mining town near Greymouth, was expressed by the Minister of Mines (Mr Shelton) when he paid it a visit.

“More districts should do this sort of thing as history is so often lost because noone bothers to preserve it,” he said. “You have re-created local history as well as providing an interest for visitors. “But your future does not depend on visitors. I am convinced of the future prosperity of the West Coast in minerals and in meeting the world shortage of energy fuels.”

The Minister presented Shantytown officials with a

brass plaque to mark the gift by the Mines Department to Shantytown of a steam locomotive that worked for 70 years at the Kaitangata coalmine.

Mr P. Kerr, head of the steam section of the West Coast Historical and Mechanical Society, told the Minister of plans to lay track for the locomotive over an old-gold-mining tramway bed to enable half-mile trips to be run through old sluicing claims along Infants Creek. Mr B. Sutherland, initiator of the Shantytown project, said that the project had benefited from the gift of rails and other materials from the Dobson mine. “We’ve lost the mining, but now we are mining the tourists,” he said.