GOLD FEVER

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 April 1946, Page 6

GOLD FEVER

SOUTH AFRICA AFIRE SEQUEL TO DISCOVERY OF RICHFIELD MILLIONS SPENT ON OPTIONS (Rec. 2 p.m.) LONDON, April 17.

South Africa is afire with gold fever following an enormously rich strike of gold near Odendaals Rust. Millions of pounds for options on once almost valueless land are pouring into the pockets of poverty stricken Orange Free State farmers, says the Associated Press Johannesburg correspondent. Small plots along the straggling street of a village once worth £5 now cannot be bought for £l2OO. Farmers, who previously had difficulty in scraping a living from the poor soil, have, now suddenly been rushed into a life of luxury.

For years the possibilities of the district had been speculated on. It is between two rich gold-bearmg districts. Investigations had been made without result.

The new strike is the first proof that gold not only exists but can be found in undreamed of quantities. The yield of 62 ounces per ton of ore in the new field compares with the average of a quartei’ of an ounce per ton. Share Prices “Through Roof”

Prices of Orange Free State issues of gold shares went “through the roof” when the London Stock Exchange opened to-day. The rich gold strike caught the imaginations of speculators, who inundated brokers and ordered them to buy shares at anything like last night's prices, but this was impossible. Prices soared at increasing speed after the lead from Johannesburg, where the market opens an hour before the London market.

A small cylinder of rock from an African gold mine yesterday put £12,000,000 into the pockets of shareholders in a matter of hours, says the city editor of the Daily Mail. The discovery at Odendaals Rust points to the existence of one of the richest goldfields in the world. There are indications of an unbroken chain of gold-bearing reefs fully 25 miles long lying near the township of Odendaals Rust. The piece of rock which caused the greatest “gold rush” in the Stock Exchange for years was only 15 inches by 14 inches. It came from a borehole “drilled by two companies— Western Holdings and Blinkpoort Gold Syndicate—on the common boundary of their properties at a spot five miles south-east of Odendaals Rust. The borehole intersected a basal reef, 3922 feet m depth, at which the main yield was encountered. It is regarded as at a reasonable distance from the surface for gold-mining operations. Incredible News.

Other good strikes were made in recent years of gold-bearing reefs five miles north and the same distance south of the latest discovery. The Daily Mail adds that Stock Exchange dealers found it difficult to believe the first cablegrams from Johannesburg, but leaping share prices in the South African goldmining centre soon dispelled doubts. Western Holdings 5/- shares, which were down to 2/3 in 1938, soared by 17/6 in little more than half an hour. The biggest rise of the day was in Blinkpoort 5/- shares, which are not quoted officially in London and which leapt in Johannesburg from 38/- to 80/- and closed at 59/6. Shares in other gold-mining companies and in leading finance houses participating in developments in the Orange Free State also recorded spectacular rises.