‘DIAMOND MINE’ FOUND

Taranaki Daily News, 31 October 1935, Page 4

‘DIAMOND MINE’ FOUND

DISCOVERY IN RANGES

OLD PROSPECTOR TELLS STORY.

DEEP CRATER IN THE HILLSIDE.

TINY GEMS IN FLAKES OF CARBON.

Carbon containing diamonds, almost microscopic in size, has been taken from an obscure crater on a hill nestling between the Kaitake and Pouakai Ranges by an old' resident of New Plymouth. Interviewed by a reporter yesterday he produced a thick flake of jet black substance —“the mother of diamonds which revealed under a microscope several stintillating and many-sided gems embedded in their dark background. While prospecting in the ranges for copper and gold, incidentally with interesting but unpayable results, he stumbled unexpectedly on a gaping crater near the top of the hill. In shape it was a jagged oval approximately three and a-half feet at its widest measurement. But what it lacked in circumference it made up in depth, as several attempts to sound it were futile. Thinking there might be water in the bottom the prospector lowered a bucket on the end of some supplejacks but finding his “rope” not long enough he pulled it up, knocking some of the lining from the sides in the procedure. This proved to be a mixture of carbon and wad and one of the specimens containing the diamonds shown to the reporter.

On his finding that the small but worthless gems existed in the material further scrapings of the walls were made at lower depths in the hope of finding larger specimens, but in vain. He then considered having himself lowered into the crater, continued the prospector, but fortunately he took the precaution of lowering a flame first which was extinguished at several hundred feet, proving the air to be foul. Advice was sought from a well known Taranaki geologist, the late Mr. Barber, who suggested a tunnel or pit at the bottom of the hill. Accordingly a shaft was sunk to the depth of about 50 feet. The soft nature of the ground, however, which consisted of layers of ochre and an unidentifiable “kind of green wax” proved unstable and caved in, and according to the old resident, just a moment after his assistant had left it.

Specimens of the carbon and wad were sent to an analyst who described their formation as being of the kind productive of diamonds—but there the matter lies, and the “diamond mine.”