SEARCH FOR GOLD

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 150, 22 December 1938, Page 11

SEARCH FOR GOLD

THE WEST COAST

WORK OF DREDGES

(Special to the "Evening Post")

CHRISTCHURCH, This Day.

A total annual output of 100,000 ounces of gold—almost double the output last year—may soon be produced by the West Coast gold dredges. Two big new dredges—one at Kanieri and one at Ikamatua in the Grey Valley —have begun work in the last few days, ?nd the returns from each of these, added to those from dredges! which have been working West Coast areas for some time, are more than j likely to make the return for this | calendar year higher than that for .j last year. * j The huge growth in mining returns from dredging is shown by a comparison between 1937 and 1931. Seven years .go dredging companies in the j Dominion produced 11,495 ounces, and in the intervening time the output has been more than quadrupled, until in | 1937 the total was 50,967 ounces. With new dredges already operating, and rumours of more in prospect it is j likely that the steep graph-line covering the increase in dredging production will become steeper still in the months to come. * When the new Kanieri dredge, built in the railway workshops, was officially j opened, speakers referred to it as a "Queen Mary" among dredges, and said that it would do more work than 10,000 miners could do by hand. Almost the same statistics apply to other dredges now working, and, with none of the glitter and excitement of an old-type prospecting gold rush, the West Coast seems begun once more on an era of intense gold production. EFFECT OF MODERN MACHINERY. Most of the areas the dredges work is what is technically known as lowgrade land —which means simply that by ordinary prospecting methods it might not be extremely profitable to work. But with the most modern machinery this land, which the oldtype prospector, with his eye on the gold in the distant hills, might have spurned, will return —as the Rimu dredge did return, in 1937—more than £3500 an acre. Each acre thus worked for the Rimu dredge in 1937 brought the Government £220 in gold tax. Typical dredge statistics are . those for the new dredge vat Ikamatua, which is under the auspices of the Rimu Gold Dredging Co., Ltd., the pioneer in the modern revival in dredging. That company, when it finished its prospecting, estimated that it would take 12 to 15 years for the dredge to work its area of almost 2000 acres. Approximately 40^ men would be employed for that time, and the total wages payable during the life of the property would be approximately £150,000. The total gold tax payable on the property, if the present tax of 12s 6d an ounce remained, would be somewhere about £100^000. \

j Actually, if the aim of 100,000 ounces of gold a year from West Coast dredges is reached, the Government will be receiving in gold tax alone— not counting other tax payments— about £62,500 a year.

In the past there has been conflict between certain farming interests and mining interests on the West Coast because of the effect dredging has on iand. But under a new scheme the Government hopes that wherever possible the unsightly heaps of tailings left in the wake of a big dredge may be planted as a State forest —an arrangement voluntarily made by the company owning the Kanieri dredge— or even that it may be possible to cover tailings, even in the roughest country, with soil.