SOUTH AFRICA’S MAINSTAY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21600, 22 March 1932, Page 12

SOUTH AFRICA’S MAINSTAY

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—A paragraph in your issue of last Friday makes interesting reading, and in these days of low prices for our primary products why can we not revert to gold

mining, “ South Africa's mainstay ”? Surely it is not forgotten that the primary product to which Otago originally owes its position, wealth, progress, and development is the identically same mineral which in these days of economic upheaval is supporting South Africa. That there is more gold yet in Otago than the millions which have in the past been added to our national wealth from that already mined is a statement which has never been challenged. At present Dunedin capital is being poured out for the development of the gold mining industry on the West Coast, and yet there is a far greater and much richer field at Dunedin’s very door. The potentialities of reefing on the Nevis, the Garrick, Pisa, and Bendigo all await exploitation, and the only reason one can attribute for the utter disregard of this hidden wealth .may be found in the words of Professor James Park in his “ Geology of the Cromwell Subdivision, p. 66—viz.: "Several quartz veins have also been located on the higher slopes of Pisa Range, but none of them contain payable ore at the outcrop.” There’s the whole thing in a nutshell; the easy-got gold hag been recovered, and what is not obviously within reach on the surface has so far failed to attract the goldseeker. Below many of these outcrops very rich alluvial gold was got; surely it was not all washed down in glacial action. Speaking of alluvial gold prompts one to suggest that there are even yet many extensive deposits which escaped the activities of the company promoter of three decades ago. — I am, etc., Digger. Cromwell, March 19.