WEST COAST GOLD

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 20 June 1931, Page 5

WEST COAST GOLD

BLACK SAND WHAT HOIM-l FOR MODERN FQSSICKI2RS? A very wise and experienced Coaster was speaking tlm other night on gold prospects on the Coast, writes a cov respondent of Iho Clirisl church 1 limes. Australia, too, is living in hopes ol some great gold find, some Eldorado miracle. It is a symptom of a financial malaise. The (hiding of one great nugget in Australia lias stimulated hope that the con linunt may be. seereLing sufficient om io carry her past the sign of the thee halls. Our own gold centre is the West Coast and in these days of dole and depression the gold fever is beginning to till minds made idle by worklcssncss.

Already men with grit and patience, men with homes and a stake in the country, are doing what mere adventurers would be (oo impatient to persist in. They are sluicing inch by inch of certain areas for gold-grains. A woman whom I know was witness the other day of one of these pannings. The gold was there, not in Ba dolus quantities, but in sufficient to reward a fossickeiwho was not looking for a fortune in a night. And that is the key to the whole situation. There is not the material for a. gold rush as yet anyway, hut there is a moderate, if hard, living for skilled and seasoned fossickers.

TRAPPING THE GOLD GRAINS The Coaster whom I mentioned earlier was alarmed by a, prevailing notion that black sand was a panacea for the present labour trouble. The uninitiated may connect black sand with oil or he wholly ignorant of its meaning. Black sand is river sand brought in by sea tides and deposited on tlm beach in veins. Fossickors seek for these veins at low tide. They then have the arduous task of carrying the black sand out of reach of high tide which might sweep it out to sea again. They use a trough with an iron plate perforated with small holes. This* plate traps the stones. The sand and the gold pass through as water is poured over it on to a floor of miners' plush. Miners’ plush is a material never heard of or seen by the average city dweller. It has a. pile almost as thick, as a southern musquash fur. It was used in earlier days for rugging hoarse nags for funerals because it had the advantage of being both warm and funereal. Its pile traps the gold grains and tlm useless sancl flows on /and over it.

Now for anyone with no cares and no life to guard hut bis own, lock sand oilers one of tlm m-ist. *’asi.bulling of occupations. Tlm sea is iiis seivant and every tide means loss o” gain. In spite of the hard work entailed there is always hope beckoning round the corner. Tlm next tide may turn the title of fortune. But two things ho knows always—there is no hope of a beach gold mine and he must know his trade.

DIFFICULTIES TO BE FACED That is what worried the Coaster in question. Things arc not flourishing in his native province. To raise the cry that anyone can make a living from black sand is to fill if with out-of-work artisans who know only tlm name of gold and nothing of tim dillicullies attendant on its trapping. ft is, lie avers, utterly impossible fee these unskilled seekers to make a hying from it. Nor is tlmir lack of skill ilm only obstacle. Where two men by carclul and unremitting search might make a living along a seven-mile beach, twenty or thirty men might starve, and starving, add complexity to an already complex situation. Even tlm search for alluvial gold is hampered by lack of machinery. Individual fossicking profits only individuals. It provides no scope for tlm concerted effort that might relieve unemployment. Hand sluicing is so slow and so tedious that it is not highly profitable. Single fossickors or small bands of fossickors might make a living from it, but io secure sluicing operations of any magnitude a dredge is necessary. Dredges are not boughtfor nothing and tlm pannings must be rich enough to justify the introduction of capital into the concern.

There is nothing spectacular or Californian about alluvial gold, no giant nuggets, no mighty lodes, but given the introduction of dredges in suitable areas there might bo some hope of relieving conditions. If this hope of gold is to become a defence mechanism in our breakdown, and if the Coast is to be flooded with clumsy gold-seekers lured' by .black sand or some other ~-ick-o-lantern, then it will know one o! the worst periods in its history. A mining camp and “a- beachcombers’ camp are two entirely different things. 1 lie alluvial sluieers who have been, brought up to river gold and the black sand lossickers who know their beach as a, bird knows its claw, know what to do and the way to do it. But tlm only oxen jo for a. gold-rush is gold in. easy quantities and of that there is as yet no sign on the Coast.