GOLD FROM THE SEA

Evening Post, Issue 27, 31 July 1935, Page 10

GOLD FROM THE SEA

TOLD IN MILLIONS

RECLAMATION ROMANCE

When Maui fished up New Zealand] he left the job not quite complete—or not quite complete according to the ideas of Wellington settlers. Between Clay Point and the sea the passageway was so narrow, and the elbowroom along the foreshore was so limited, that the immigrant white men coveted some of the shelving slopes of the harbour bed, and they realised their desires not by fishing up the bed, but by excluding the water and filling in the enclosures.

This bit of land that Maui overlooked is worth as much as the whole of New Zealand was worth in Marsden's day. The total area so reclaimed is 293 acres, of which the Crown now owns 141 acres, the Wellington Harbour Board 55 acres, and the Wellington City Corporation 22 acres; besides which 12 acres is privately owned, while streets, wharf approaches, and public foreshores account for 61 acres. At the very latest valuation (March 31, 1935) this land, apnrt 'from streets, was returned at a value of £4,195,020. A.dd £4,264,765'f0r buildings, and the total valuation is £8,443,785. This, it will be admitted, is not a bad bit of fishing. THORNDOX RECLAMATION. A return published in 1881 shows that the Thorndon reclamation, 40 acres, cost the Government £60,511 19s 6d, and by that year the Government had sold a portion of it for £32,888 13s Id; and, according to the return, the amount sold was only a little over three acres. This Thorndon reclamation was responsible for providing 26 acres for railway station purposes, 12 acres for streets, and one acre for the Government buildings and the courts.

"Focus," monthly publication of the Local Bodies Officers' Guild, to whom we are indebted for these figures, points out that the treasure tale of the Wellington foreshore outshines the story of the Artiglio's gold. The Artiglio salvaged from the Egypt nearly £1,000,000 of gold, but the reclaimers have salvaged from the harbour an asset that more than quadruples those figures.

At the first sale of the 1852. reclamation three sections "in Willis Street were sold at £6 per foot frontage. This same land, changed hands within recent years at £1000 per foot. If we were to obtain gold from the sea bottom and could get 5 per cent, compound interest for the use of it, we would double its original value in 15s years, but here we have mere land which in 83 years has become 166 times its original value. In 83. years the gold (if the banks and the law would permit) would have become only 57 times more valuable, so that in the incre-

ment race, gold is an "also started."

From 1866 to 1877 an area 'of 12 acres was reclaimed at a cost of £25,028 18s, and in 1871 the Welling ton City Corporation paid £31,000 for less than half of it, 5 acres 3 roods, with which went a wharf and bond store. This land now returns to the Corporation by way of ground rents a sum greater than the original cost of the land. To say that 61 acres of the total reclamation has been devoted to streets, wharf approaches, etc., is to suggest that there has'been a liberal dedication to traffic and transport, yet the bottleneck between Clay Point and the receded harbour front remains,' and congestion here will call for some heroic remedy unless both passengers and goods solve the problem by taking extensively to the air.