Coolgardie Goldfield.

Opunake Times, Volume V, Issue 199, 31 July 1896, Page 2

Coolgardie Goldfield.

Sydney, July 28. The Sydney Telegraph, in conjunction with the Melbourne Age and the Adelaide Advertiser, is publishing a series of articles from a mining expert who has been specially commissioned to visit and report upon the Westralian gold fields. So far the investigations have been confined to the Coolgardie district. The writer says : " I fear the future fortunes of Coolgardie do not rest with the gold output of its mines. During the boom some 200 companies with a share capital of about £10,000,000 were floated. During the two years which have since elapsed £2,200,000 have been spent in wages and machinery in prospecting and developing these mines, with the amazing result that 98 per cent of them have proved white elephants." With the exception of Bayley's Reward not one company has ever paid a dividend, and of the whole mass of 200 only the Lady Loch and the Burbanks Birthday Gift have any prospects, or are worthy of being considered as mines of some value. Up to within the last three or four months the whole group averaged an output not exceeding 400 oz per week. Coolgardie, he asserts, is destined to become a wayside township, because its present prosperity is built on the shifting quicksands of English capital, which is certain to be withdrawn when the British speculators find their brilliant expectations of dividends met by demands for more money to develop worthless mines. The over-capitalisation has been extravagant in some cases. Incompetent management is killing Coolgardie, as well as other Westralian goldfields where the golden prospects are more promising. One cannot get away from the fact that a great many, if not the majority, of the mines are doomed to an inglorious end. Companies scattered throughout the fields are managed by Englishmen, assisted by costly staffs, whose only occupation appears to be reading novels and drinking whisky and champagne. London directors and shareholders will bitterly rue the day they sanctioned such lavish expenditure.