RICH IRON ORE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 56, Issue 4046, 11 May 1938, Page 10

RICH IRON ORE

AUSTRALIA’S RICHES GOING TO JAPAN. TEN THOUSAND ISLANDS OF COLOUR AND BEAUTY. Blood-red crags of pure haemetite rising a thousand feet from tropic seas; tides and tide rips tumultuous in a Niagara of water power; the glamorous archipelagoes of trepang and pearls, such is the glory of the iron islands of Yampi, that Australia is yielding to the stranger, writes a Western Australian correspondent of the Sydney Sun. The warning of Dr Woolnough that Australia may be guilty of a breach of national faith tp the future, is a reminder that “iron, cold iron, is master of men all.” Twenty-three million tons of 80 per cent iron ores in sight at Cockatoo, Koolan and Irvine Islands alone have made Yampi the coveted, of all beholders for 30 years. Japan showed interest in it long ago, Queensland bid for it, Australian Iron and Steel secured it, but nothing was done. Now we learn that another important port is to be added to the map of Western Australia —with direct sea lines to Nippon. For how long will that port be British? By the good luck of a lazy century, this continent is coloured red all over. Yampi has been too far away for Australia to take it seriously. It is near enough for Nippon. TEN EQUALS THOUSANDS. Two hundred miles north of Broome, Yampi is the strait that separates the Buccaneer Islands from the mainland. The Buccaneers are shown on the Commonwealth’s latest map as ten small dots. In reality they are 10,000 —a paradise of coral isles set in a sunlit sea. For 200 miles north from Fremantle that coast is low and flat and monotonous—sand. But at Cape Leveque it swings into bewildering grandeur that in its tour ist interest alone challenges all else in Australia. For colour it is unsurpassed in the world. Cones and pyramids of burnished copper, of ruby red and yellow ochre white capped with quartzite, of cut crystal and amethyst and cinnabar and jasper, velveted over with spinifex and glittering with mica, flash back the light from those pale seas. ‘ Milky tides chat rise and fall 35 feet, twice a day, race in and out of the Sound at, 10 knots, seething over the reefs, bubbling at the feet of the castled crags and sweeping all before them.

Turtle and dugong tumble in the blue lagoons. The blacks, crossing from island to island on mangrove rafts, pick up pearl shell and trochus at low tide to trade in to the missions once or twice 9. year. In every bywater multitudes of fish swerve as at a whipcrack. To the southward stretches the mainland, flanked by range upon range of ledged hills and indented by glorious fiords and shining havens, most of them still unexplored. Majestic headlands glow like opals in the dawn.

In the rose light of evening the clouds and the islands are deckleedged with gold. The night is a white fire of stars and phosphorus, with the corroboree fires of the Worrora glowing red on the crest of the cliffs. WEALTH UNSURVEYED. Cockatoo, Koolan, Margaret, Bathurst, Irvine, King Hall and the Scaddans are the largest islands—up to seven miles long and 1000 feet high. Of these Cockatoo, Koolan and Irvine are almost pure iron. Towards the east and Collier Bay the archipelago burns itself out in rust, the ashes of red haemetite rocks. Several attempts have been made to float companies, both here and in England, for the exploitation of marine products in this region. A geological survey of the acknowledged mineral wealth is still occasionally mooted —and forgotten. . Captain Hemsworth, a pearler of Broome, unearthed a classy emerald on the shores of Whirlpool .Pass. Sandalwood and tortoise shell and trochus and pearls are only a few -ol the possibilities. Three or four of the old hatters of Kimberley have found gold in the Buccaneers—ana lost their lives there. When I sailed there in 1934 the natives set the islands aflame to welcome us. On Cockatoo Island, where a ship can anchor in 10 fathoms right under the cliffs of iron, was a tiny abandoned village of three houses, set up at a cost of £lO,OOO by Australian Iron and Steel, which held the leases of Yampi for many years. There was.a wireless station, two comfortable residences, now crumbling, and an explosives storehouse freighted 3000 miles north—and then deserted. Water in plenty burbled from the cascades, and the swamp pheasants were calling about the ruins. Yampi, it seemed, was only another “white elephant.” Maybe the Japanese don’t know a “white elephant” • ' ' they