LURE OF GOLD

Greymouth Evening Star, 31 May 1935, Page 11

LURE OF GOLD

ODYSSEY OF A PIONEER.

SYDNEY, May 24.

An old, eager, grey-bearded goldminer lay on his bed in. the front room of his house, which, red-painted, is on a grassy sloping road running down to the white beach and the blue sea. He was ill, but he was chuckling. His voice was firm. “True, there’s a lure in gold. Truly, there is." His mind’s eye was seeing in a bread sweep a period covering more than sixty years of gold-mining history in Australia. “A goldminer’s life is a free, clean, strongSife. In the morning he wakes up, goes out to his diggings. In the evening he comes back to his hut and, sitting alone, has his meal, an oil lamp swaying his shadow maybe. And f he holds a bright, hard nugget in his hand, he can watch it and say, ‘Ah, yes! Gold! Clean gold! you’re mine; and -this morning you were in the black depths of the mountain earth." i

He held up his hands from the counterpane and stared at them; long, thin hands. He clenched his fists suddenly. ‘And I’d do it again," he cried exultantly. “I’d live every minute of my life again, the way I’ve lived it. I’d answer the lure of yellow gold. I’d go up the rivers; into the mountains. I’d search for gold and find it!" The terrier by his side, curled up on the mat, looked at him with soft, eloquent eyes. Outside, the sun streamed down. A vagrant moth was fluttering. He was Mr. Phillip Watterson, aged 92, one of the oldest living pioneer goldminers in the Commonwealth, and he was in bed at his home in Stan-hope-street, Woonona, a little more than a mile from Bull!. Mr. Watterson was born in the Isle of Man and came to Australia at the age of 18, landing at Melbourne, which, he said, was “a small enough bit of a place then” in 1843. Innocent though he was of anything connected with mining, he “plunged straight into it—raw recruit as I was, and since then I’ve hunted gold in Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland."

MUCH GOLD YET. As to -the amount of gold still undiscovered in Australia. Mr. Watterson is convinced that it is immense. “I believe that there is plenty of gold in Australia, and that there is as much in New South Wales as anywhere,” he said. He added that he thought the future before the Richmond River as a source of gold was a great one. In the vicinity of the river there were quantities of basalt, ami wherever -that was it was reasonable to expect gold. He knew the district well, having been over it many times, and he had concluded there was no doubt but that at one time there had been a great eruption in.the mountains beyond Kyogle, resulting in the river bed being -filled with basalt. It was his opinion that the original river bed was below the line of basalt. He recalled one mine in Victoria which he had helped work where gold was found below four layers of basalt. It had produced as much as 800 to 1000 ounces daily, year in and year out. Much gold had been got from Lucknow, Mr. Watterson remarked, but he was’sure that much more could be got from it. Once there he had bored a hole, fired it, and there was thrown out about one ton of stuff which yielded 100 ounces. That was back in the GO’S. Mr Watterson said he could confirm tales telling of the prevalence of gold thieves in the early days in all three States. He said that as one who hao taken part in most of the big gold rushes, excepting those in the West, he knew that the terror of the gold robber was a real one. Robbery under arms was not uncommon, although he had never been held up. Until he was in the early thirties, Mr. Watterson stuck to mining, hut from then until he was about forty he left it. for farming at Orange. Afterwards he went back to mining and managed a number of mines, retiring when he was 70. Since then he has been living at Woonona. He is a widower and five of his eight childien are living. Miss Mary Watterson residing with him. When he is up and about, he said, his eyes often turn to the trees on Bull! Pass and he thinks of “the great, exciting days that have gone.” —