THE LOST NUGGET.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 59, 23 March 1907, Page 4

THE LOST NUGGET.

Mr William Anderson, a. Sydney entertainer, is a consummate advertiser. Tu attract- people to his Wonderland City at Bondi ho bought a nugget of gold worth £2O and buried it in the beach Wow hi> city, announcing that he or she who found it could keep it. Thero was one condition; all who would seek the buried treasure must first buy a spade from him for sixpence. This stipulation landed him in a difficulty. When every shop and warehouse had been ransacked only 1090 spades were available, and many thousands wanted to dig. Having got their toy spade: the crowd gathered at the barricade which kept them from the beach until the signal was given A Wonderland employee clambered on an elephant, and explained that thirty-six boxes bad been buried, thirtyfive of which were delusions, and the tliirty sixth contained the 1 nugget. When the gi.u went the ciiowd rushed tlno'.igh the nanow entrance, a.mii the shrieks of women and children, and fell to digging furiously for the nugget, watched by many thousands at higher points. Every part of the beach, says the Daily Tele graph, was filled with men, women and children, sitting, standing or kneeling. "Hero was a grey-licadcd woman <ui her knees with her lap full of sand and her arms working convulsively; there was a father and two small sons digging in a triangle; yonder, and yonder, and yonder were fashionably dressed ladies delving, and scratching, and fossicking bolow the surface. Some worked quietly and steadily ; others ran from place to place; many broke their spades in their excitement. In live minutes the beach was like a buffalo wallow, but the sand had not given up its treasure." Every now and then a digger would jump up from a, crowded position as jf stung, and it would be seen that he iiad a box in his band. In a moment he would be surrounded and jostled, till it became known that the box was one of the thirty-five empty ones, ajid the crowd would laugh and resume digging. Most of the diggers t'red of their vork at the end of three-quarters of an hour, and left the beach, but hundreds worked 011 with an earnestness oi purpose that conquered disappointment, aching arms, and sore backs. They dug 011 over new and old ground, but all to no purpose Nobody found the nugget. Mr Anderson was disappointed at tlio result, and decided to give £2O, the worth of the nugget, to tli3 children's Aid Society. The Daily Telegiaph calls the scene "a pageant of greed and curiosity."