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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 13, Issue 4 (July 1, 1938.)

Muddled Apologies

Muddled Apologies.

“Your people haven't sent the things I ordered yesterday.”

“Dear, dear! The fact is, madame, my right hand is away with a swollen foot!”

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Like most tales of concealed gold resources-that type of story which relates how somebody has found the key to the vault of gold at the bottom of the rainbow and dies before he can pass on the information-the following is true to type.

Not many years ago, in a sparsely-settled portion of the back country of the Bay of Plenty, there lived an old -very old-Scotsman, a bachelor. Within a radius of about 15 miles there were only three other farms. “Old Bob,” as he was known, had a holding of about 1,200 acres, mostly scrub and bush, but he and his small flock of sheep and an Arab horse managed to make a living. Being spare hand on a farm within five miles of his homestead I often used to pay him a visit during the week-end. So isolated and uninhabited was the district that for both he and myself this visit was the highlight of the week.

After a few months, as the friendship developed, my curiosity prompted me to ask him why he persisted in retaining an obviously unproductive farm. He gave a slight grin, and groping around the floor under the sack and manuka structure which served him as a bed, he produced a canvas bag and spilled the contents on a sack in front of the open fire. Several pieces of light-coloured quartz caught the glow of the flames. And that quartz was well streaked with gold.

Now, gold had never been found within miles of the district, and when I asked him from where he got the quartz he smiled, and said: “On my farm, laddie.” He explained further that he first came across gold-bearing quartz many years before, when he was one of two settlers in the valley, but that he had never located the mother vein. He had, in latter years, he said, ignored the development of his farm in his search for gold and that he was now on the eve of complete discovery.

He never made his “complete discovery” because “old Bob”-to reiterate, all stories like this finish up the same way-died a week or two later without divulging his secret. With the exception of one piece which he gave me, the quartz he had in his possession when he died was missing when his house was searched, but I have reason to believe he changed the hiding place the same evening that he revealed the canvas bag to me-the last time I saw him alive. However unsatisfying this tale may seem, I am convinced that 15 miles inland from the Pikowai Siding in the Bay of Plenty “there's gold in them thar hills.” -“Flint.”