GUADALCANAL GOLD

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 7, 10 January 1944, Page 4

GUADALCANAL GOLD

A PROSPECTORS' CAMP

STH. PACIFIC BASE, January 1. The declaration of a gold prospecting area in Guadalcanal and the arrival of Australian prospectors there, during the term of office of Sir Harry Luke as High Commissioner, is recalled by a visit which a few American soldiers recently paid to the interior of the island, penetrating to one of the most remote and rugged parts. Led by native guides, they finally arrived at a group of five large buildings, deserted except for a faithful native caretaker, who had learnt to speak English at a British native mission school. From him they heard that it had been the camp of five prospectors who had left the island when the Japanese arrived. Tha largest building had been their living quarters, furnished with beds with springs, wicker chairs, tables, a 200-book library, and a white enamelled kero-sene-operated refrigerator. The caretaker explained how it had taken 40 natives.to get the refrigerator there; and how they had been paid in tobacco for their labour, for most Guadalcanal natives smoke pipes, women and children included. No Japanese had penetrated so far as the fold camp, although an enemy plane ad once circled low over the buildings, according to the caretaker. Two of the other buildings had been native quarters, and the remaining two were tool sheds still full of equipment, and a number of buckets of gravel, which the prospectors had evidently been examining just before their departure. From the size of the camp and the amount of equipment, the visitors gathered that rich deposits of gold had been discovered and that rather extensive'mining operations had been contemplated. Night was spent at the camp, the caretaker looking after the soldiers much as he must have looked after his former employers. The soldiers were even furnished with dry army uniforms while their own were drying. This was possible because the natives have carried large amounts of salvaged army equipment into the interior. This camp is located' high on a ridge where the mountains of I£ie interior rise to peaks 8000 feet above the sea. The most difficult part of the trip- was the fording of rivers, swollen by continual tropical rains. In most of these small rivers the water was chest deep. At one crossing a member of the party lost his footing and was washed several hundred yards downstream before he could struggle.to.the bank,