GOLDFIELD LAND RUSH

Waikato Times, Volume 118, Issue 19631, 18 July 1935, Page 13

GOLDFIELD LAND RUSH

LIVELY SOENES.

ASPIRANTS FOR BUSINESS CLAIMS

(Empire Press Union.)

BRISBANE, July 4

Women, 'children and old men running along the road to the Warden’s office, cars and trucks with engines roaring, and hundreds of men wielding picks, crowbar's and axes for dear life —these were somo of the incidents that marked the rush to peg out 15 business claims at the. Tennant’s ’Creek goldfield recently. ■ Several parties camped for the night on the site which they had selected, and hundreds of others were on the scene hours before the time appointed for the blocks to be open for pegging. The firing of a shot from the Warden’s office and the hoisting of a flag from a telegraph post gave the signal that the land was open for selection, and immediately the whole field became a hive in activity. In accordance with the mining laws, each aspirant for a block had to peg his claim at each corner with a peg of not less than four inches diameter, standing three feet out of the ground, after having been driven in one foot. At each corner trenches six inches wide, three inches deep and three feet long, dug at right angles, were required to be excavated to mark the direction in which the next pegs were to be found.

Prior to the land being thrown open for selection, the Director of Northern Territory '.Mining announced that any physical violence by any of the competitors or their agents would result in disqualification, and this prevented any unseemly scenes, although in the first few minutes after the shot was fired as many as eight or nine men were to be seen working in tile space of a square yard. When an aspirant for a block had pegged out his selection, he was required to run with his application for tlie registration of his selection to the Warden’s office, and for the most part aspirants for blocks worked in teams of four, three attending to the pegging out of the claim, and the swiftest runner of the team carrying the application to (tie Warden’s office. Mrs D’Aroy Goddard, sister of a cripple, Major Clerk, who is forming an air service to the goldfield, was one of tile aspirants for a block, and the men on Hie field gallantly stepped aside and left it open for her. They even assisted her to peg the block.