OUR GOLD OUTPUT

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXV, Issue 3371, 29 September 1931, Page 5

OUR GOLD OUTPUT

AN INTERESTING LETTER. "Ex-Coaster" writes to the Christchuch Star pointing out that while we hear a good deal of France's and America's accumulation of the world's gold, but very few people outside of the West Coast know that New Zealand is a large contributor to America's wealth. He says that at Riinu , near Hokitika, a large dredge has been operating for the last eight or ten years. In the first year the returns appeared both in Hokitika and Greymouth papers, but for some reason it was stopped. However, he remembers they were about £BOO per week. Where the dredge is working it is heavy bush land. They have a sawmill, and bushmen cut down the timber, and it is conveyed on trolleys to the mill and cut up into building timber, so that both the surface and underneath is revenue-producing. Now they have built another larger dredge to dig deeper, and it is going over the ground the former did, so that with two dredges at work it would be interesting to know their output. The gold won is retorted at Rimu and cast into bar or brick and then sent to America. The dredges are electrically driven by generators which also supply the town of Hokitika .and surrounding district. There are thousands of acres of land similar on the coast, and as one who knows the country well, the writer says he is certain New Zealand will always have a large gold output when further developed.