A NEW BROKEN HILL

Northern Advocate, 23 February 1926, Page 7

A NEW BROKEN HILL

NORTHERN GOLD FAMINE.. BASE METALS DREAM. WELLINGTON, This Day. 'A gentleman who states that he and those associated with him havo done a good deal of prospecting in the Ruahine ranges, and have found there “crude ore,” writes asking for the address of tho German firm which, according to northern telegrams, is interesting itself in refractory ore deposits in the Thames-Coromandel district. In reply, he is being supplied with the name of an Auckland mining engineer who may enlighten him. Broadly speaking, what is happening in the north is that another attempt is being made to exploit the mineral wealth of the Coromandel-Thaanes and neighbouring goldfields. Gold output has declined, and many years ago—in tho early stages of its decline —tho ambition arose to win minerals other than gold, and so fill the economic blank caused by the scarcity of the yellow metal. A base-metals future for tho goldfields—a future more economic than, if not as sensational as, the passing gold era—was envisaged. But for at least forty years the other metals, equally with gold, have eluded pursuit;

Tho principal reasons for this elusiveness seem to be two. One is that while a wonderful variety of precious or useful minerals is found , on tho northern goldfields, deposits of marketable quantity are rare. (It has been said that “New Zealand is a country of mineral samples rather than a mineral country.”) The second reason is that whore' high value (silver lead and such like) is found in proved economic quantities, the refractory character of the ore has defied extraction —that is, big-scale economic extract as apart from laboratory treatment.

Telegrams from the north now state that big refractory ore deposits at Waiorao, Puru. and Tapu (these places are north of Thames, on "the Coromandel Road), also at Tararu Creek, Thames, are being taken up, or negotiated for, by German capital, with a view to economic treatment of the ore through the skill of German metallurgists and technical men. Incidentally, it is telegraphed that parcels of concentrates from these ores are being sent oversea for test purposes. Quite forty years ago concentrates (the concentrated, and therefore transportable, values of the ore after partial treatment) were sent from the same districts to various Australian smelting centres; the same thing has been done many times since; and if German metallurgical science can do what the corresponding science in Australia and New Zealand has evidently failed to do—“well, why not?”

If the advent of German brains and capital means that a silver-lead or basemetals industry is to be created in the north, instead of being merely dreamed about, most people will probably say: “Well and good.” Another Broken 1 Hill" would' be welcome. But ■it would be prudent to- watch.- tire situation carefully, to 1 discriminate between good -and bad, and to discourage any attempt to manufacture a “boom” not out of actual mineral performances, but out of the German mining tradition or the legend of metallurgical miracles that were never performed either on the Rhino or elsewhere.