IDLE WEALTH

Southland Times, Issue 18938, 11 May 1923, Page 8

IDLE WEALTH

FAR NORTH OF AUSTRALIA. Beyond the sugar-growing area of North Queensland, and farter north, the land is undeveloped and unproductive, owing to lack of capital and labour, declares Nancy Francis in the Sydney Daily Telegraph. The scant population, composed of a few stationholders, farmers, and miners, instead of increasing, is steadily going down. This, in the case of the miners, is due to the slump in the metal market, and the facts that existing mines have become poor after years of working, and very few new ones are discovered or opened. Indeed, through the low price of ore and the inflated cost of living, the genuine working prospector has almost ceased to exist. There can be no doubt, however, that in these vast, untrodden wilds there is precious metal in abundance. In many places lodes of tin and wolfram are known to exist, but men cannot afford to spend time on a search which may last for months or years. One of the best-known prospectors of the north, John Dickie, the discoverer of some of the most famous goldfields of North Queensland, told me once that he knew of gold in several localities, but the country would not keep horses, was waterless, and so difficult to negotiate that with the means at his disposal it was taboo.

Gold and tin have been found—and lost again. A man found gold on the Daintree, and on his way into Cooktown to report to the warden was killed and although many have searched, no one has found it again. None but a bushman knows how easy it is to lose a ridge in a wilderness of ridges, a particular point in miles of similar country, or any place in dense scrub. Experienced men, walking a track in the jungle scrub may, after stopping, or turning, become uncertain of their direction, and return on the path traversed. What wonder, then, that when a man — away from all roads, tracks and landmarks —where the very mountains take unfamiliar forms, finds a splendid prospect of metal, od often it is impossible to again locate his discovery. The North is full of these lost finds. Along the coastal districts there are deposits of iron oxides of varying ;hades of red and brown, yielding such valuable pigments as Indian red, Venetian red, red oxide, and purple, brown, yellow and red ochres. These are the colours the blacks have used from time immemorial to adorn their bodies, and as barter with inland tribes; and they exist so conveniently and in such bulk that the cost of mining >vould be very small. Australia imports about £500,000 worth of these pigments annually. Some effort has been made to commercialise the vast leposits of Cape Flattery’, but lack of capital in the district, and interest further ifield, has so far discouraged the attempt. The wonderful timbers of the far north hould provide an industry’ to keep hundreds of men in employment, but the law must be altered and intelligently applied before men can, with profit, engage in it. In the meantime the cedars, maples, silkyoaks, the hard woods, and all the beautiful timber which grows so luxuriantly here, falls and rots.

There is the lawyer vine, with its millions of yards of cane, which could be used in the manufacture of furniture and baskets, and the grass-tree, from whose resinous root many important chemicals ?an be procured. These things, and many more, are ready to be used—are waiting for someone with magination and capital to turn them to account.

I have written before of the fertility if the soil, the delightful climate, the perceet health conditions of this neglected 're.asure-land, lying open and undefended, against the enemy who will one day come, unless the policy—the selfish and suicidal policy—which has kept it, empty and undeveloped, is drastically changed.