THE DRAMA OF GOLD MINING.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21148, 4 October 1930, Page 3

THE DRAMA OF GOLD MINING.

A WANDERER’S IMPRESSIONS.

Written for the Otago Daily Times

By Jonathan Q. Pertel.

Away at the back of Queenstown up a rugged mountain valley there is a vast white range called the Sugar Loaf country into which not many years ago trooped hundreds of prospectors looking for gold, men who, invariably hard-up, hoped'frftm hearsay to find untold wealth lying in lumps, only to spend hours climbing from crag to crag for a glimpse of the slender yellow vein in the greenstone. Very few except experts ever made more than a living out of this sinister region—and when they did they usually spent it foolishly. The cone of the Sugar Loaf must surely have been christened such by a hungry man or—was it a nugget of that size? At evening its provocative peak catches the glow of a Earning sunset, and sometimes, ruddy hued, is not unlike a mountain of gold. The valley arresting with its austere beauty and the wild ; desolation of the green and brown river that writhes and swells, a huge python, through narrow clefts of shale and open sandy basins, fascinates- the wanderer with a gaunt grandeur. Amid those canyons of discarded rock one feels fortunes have been lost and found long before, and it would .be worse than useless to try again. Yet some optimistic spirits there are who dig and dredge for gold, and it was these that I had set out to see. One of the greatest advantages of being a travelling freelance is that one need not be bound by any, definite route nor confined by a set programme of transportation. From inquiries at Queenstown I had learned that the Sugar Loaf mine was about four miles distant and approached by the Shotover road. It would be possible, I gathered, by means of an ordinary push-bike, to save time in getting to the mine and by following along the river for another two miles or so reach the Shotover dredge, whence, mounting to the I main road again, I could come home by the famous Kawarau dam at the outlet of Lake Wakatipu.' This sounded a most promising and interesting trip, and I forthwith hired a blue bike. I mention the colour to make it distinct from red, the reason for which will appear later. Somewhere on the lower slopes of the Sugar Loaf Valley in the fastnesses of the ferns is a bicycle pump,, a black one, left in a hurry by a departing visitor—but this is anticipating. Long before I came to a gate on the right which led by a rough track to the mine I had grown tired of the push-bike. Its saddle was of the adaptable variety. That is to say, its front hi would go down when I was going uphill, and its back half, up when I was going downhill. By this means it was a ridiculously easy matter to fall foul of the gears, accidentally change them with a jog of , the knee, strip dead on an incline and shoot disastrously forward down a slope. In ,a relatively short distance I had passed through the gamut of these experiences. , Consequently it was with soniething very like a Bigh of relief that I at last sighted the white gate, lifted my hired machine over.the top bar, and. deposited it on a grassy bank in the shade so that the sun would not burst the tyres. Not until then did it dawn ‘ upon me that 1 would want the machine later on if I were to complete my circular trip without a repetition of half the journey. Now the track itself was not too wide, but it was safe enough- to cycle alotag, so I mounted again and plodded away steadily. Presently through the' stillness of the air came the ; . Sounds of metal and steam, and in another second I was round a bend and saw in front a cluster of huts and a quarry,'; The mine 1 I pushed on. *■'" ‘ Even from a distance the camp was interesting, small enough in that big semi-circle of atone where, indeed, there was a drop of 200 or 300 feet' Perched, it seemed, on the very peak of the precipice was a little red hut—l picked it out as a dynamite dump, but subsequently learned that it belonged to the foreman. This gentleman in gumboots, a black shirt, and a hat was already engaged in showing some lumps of gold, the largest, perhaps, about the size of ■a small pebble, to a lady and gentleman who had appeared from the other side ■ of the scrub. Every other man about the place seemed to be busy with work, while the pumps was deafening. Unslinging my movie camera, -I wandered from spot to spot taking pictures, and here and there dropping into casual conversation with •a blue and yellow jerseyed toiler. The jerseys belong to a local Queenstown football club, but apart from their colour have no connection with the metal in the rocks..’ “ Anything ‘ doing'? ” I asked one of these perspiring giants, but he, like Solomon, was wisely guarded in reply, arid referred me to the foreman. This functionary still being busy with the couple, I had to wait, and employed the time in personal investigations. On the left of the red hut was a rude sort of tent covering the plant for operating the compressed air drills which are used for boring through the layers of rock. Still farther to the left, but lower down and on a ledge by itself, was a large white box labelled with the legend “ Care— Explosives” in rough black letters. It was obvious that there would be no point in going nearer, so I turned to the other side and encountered a narrow ravine. This had already been “worked,” and its sides were propped up with different thicknesses of wood (or “ stripes,” as they .are sometimes called) to prevent its caving in. In mining phraseology such blue grey slaty substance when wet and moist is called a “greasy head" and can prove dangerous when blasting. In the ordinary way, however, everything had been going well and there were no reports of accidents to the workers. Stepping over a two-plarik bridge, I gazed down the gully to where water was being pumped up for washing out the gold. Only the best fine gold can be cleaned in this way, and even so it has to be separated from lead dust with a magnet Operations are conducted on the principle that gold, the heavier metal, always sinks to the bottom. Roughly, the whole procedure is as follows:—The area to be worked is first divided into great patches or squares, cleared of scrub or large timber, and drilled out to the face of the cliff after surface workings are complete. The slate is then cut through with pneumatic drills worked by compressed air, so that suitably powerful charges of explosives may be laid inside the. rock to be blasted. At a given signal all hands clear from the danger zone,- and the charge is fired. When all is still again the men return to work, and when sufficient ground has been opened np in -this way wooden chutes and water runs are set at a convenient angle. The face of the quarry is then sprayed with powerful water jets and allowed to drain off. The gold is stopped at different stages on the way down by various devices. To start with the rough stuff, of course, is collected by hand. Then comes the greenstone and Maoristone, It also can be picked out by hand if found in sufficient quantities. Usually, unless a claim is superlatively rich, the greenstone is without great quantities of gold. Much “ dead ” work has to be performed, and may tons of “ clay ” removed before the gold can be refined. Even half an ounce of pure gold, however, will pay to mine a ton of stone. The dream of the gold digger is fulfilled if he strikes a reef averaging 50oz to the ton. Nothing is more thrilling than seeing the precious metal being wrested from its hiding places. As soon as he could

the foreman washed out a tray of gold for me to see,, separating as he did so, the particles of lead with a horse-shoe magnet. It is rare for any gold to escape down the chutes, and, even if it did, sacking, manuka scrub, and “ ripples” (a type of wooden scrubbing board) help to stop it. Sometimes coconut matting is used for the very fine gold, and thick perforated metal plates for the rougher stuff. The sides and bottom of the chutes themselves are made of boxwood, and such is the care with which every digger is taught to piece together the planking that although the same chute is used for weeks and often months and years on end, there is scarcely a recorded instance of its ever wearing out. On one occasion it is said that an unfortunate miner slipped while wading up stream and plunged a foot right through its side. It is not solely to keep the wet out that modern gold-washers wear rubber boots! As soon as I had seen all there was to be seen round the Sugar Loaf Mine I started, plus bike, in the direction of the dredging plant, over two miles away along the course of the river. This, incidentally, flowed for the most part between huge cliffs so that I had to keep well up the mountain'.slope. The friendly foreman had told me that by doing so I would strike a sheep track, but somehow or other for the first quarter of a mile or so I missed it, and even_ when I did eventually manage to find it the going was so rough I rather imagine that it must have been one of the old disused ones. Anyway it was a sort of switchback, quite bare of grass, and I saw sheep, a hundred yards away. Then most unexpectedly I met a man coming the other way. Politely he stood aside for me to pass, and when this difficult manoeuvre had been performed successfully the first thing he asked me was whether I expected to strike a road. When I mentioned the dredge he was not sure, it seemed, about the possibility of getting down to the river with a push bike. The switchback track did not go on for ever. Certainly there were fields beyond, but whether it would be wise to cross them or not was a different matter. They belonged to a funny farmer, there were bulls and dogs about, and even geeee were not particularly partial to a tramp with a bicycle. How a stranger would get over to the dredge without crossing those fields this cheerful didn’t know; that was my little affair. Anyway, at the first field I seemed to be in luck, for I couldn’t even see a cow. So I hurried right across it, and got into the second field. Here, too, there didn’t seemed to be anything moving except a duck around a haystack at the other gate. Unfoxtunnately this proved far from being the case. Hardly had I drawn level with the, said haystack when a terrific bellow came right out of it. As I opened the gate I had just time to glimpse an enormous bln n k bull charging straight from the far end of the haystack towards tuc biue bicycle. Even now I regard it as. a miracle that I was able to save the machine. The bull’s horns could not have been more than a yard from it as I whipped the wheels over the top of the gate. As for the infuriated animal, who was clearly “seeing blue,” he just tore • along the fe-cing and tossed his head in the air. • The rumours about the geese, the dogs and the farmer were fortunately greatly exaggerated, and as I Was now close to the stream (It had suddenly dwindled to almost less than that) I was ever so pleased with myself. The next step Was to get right down to the dredge, I could see and hear it working plainly enough, and after a bit of trouble with barbed wire and quite a sharp argument with a what-not, minus a thread or two of trouser leg, I got there. Gold-dredging is perhaps the most dramatic and paying of all ways of reclaiming gold. A huge revolving dredger floating on a muddy agitated pool 30 feet deep, an accumulated roar of machinery and a clanking of chains as the greedy metal mouths of the monster bite deep, into the sand and unceasingly raise their dripping loads well above the surface; labouredly travelling up a mechanical gangway they deposit their contents on a huge revolving drum, where, passing through several processes, the gold in each bucketful is treated with quicksilver, boiled in a retort and completely refined and “ caked.” The managing dredge-master has an interesting life story. He was born in “ the steadiest city in the world ” Dunedin. Many years ago ho went out to Malay and later became a big Authority on mining matters on the Island of Banca. Here he stayed 12 years, but, there was the malaria. Rather than sacrifice his health for the salary of £IOO a month, he decided to come hack to New Zealand, and for a while took up fruit-farming. Then, Just as he was about to realise all hia investments a late frost came along and nipped all the young fruit. “So now I’m back at the gold game, young fellow,” he said with a laugh, “but I would not advise anyone without experience to try it. That’s straight.” That was “ straight ” all right, and as there was now a road I mounted the pushbike and headed back for .Queenstown. On the way I turned aside to see the Kawarau Dam, where £1,23,000 was sunk in vain to change a river’s course. “We got a good bridge out of it ” that was the only comment I heard from a dweller on the riverside. Said another, “ The gold’s there right enough, but so’s the water.- Unless they build another dam they’ll never get at it.” And so niggard Nature still withholds her wealth from the greedy hands of man. Perhaps future “science” will achieve something more. Meanwhile the drama of gold mining goes on. Labouring under many handicaps diggers sometimes do far more work than they are paid for, and so often as not “ miner’s complaint,” a kind of congestion of the lungs, is the lifp-long reward of those who work underground.