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New Zealand'S Gold Coast—

(Continued from page 13 )

How different from the old “hit or miss” methods of the early alluvial diggings, or from the world's first gold dredge—the invention of a Chinaman working on the Otago goldfields sixty years ago!

How various people view this great enterprise—the re-working of the great alluvial flats of the West Coast with modern dredges—is as interesting as the actual operations.

To the Minister of Railways (the Hon. D. G. Sullivan) the enterprise is a further sign of faith in New Zealand, its accomplishments and resources, and the faithful building of the dredge is just an additional opportunity taken by the men of the Railways to do the best they could for the people of New Zealand.

To the General Manager of Railways, Mr. G. H. Mackley, there is satisfaction in the fact that the great Railway organisation could with equal facility turn from the manufacture of rolling-stock to the manufacture of dredges that would bear favourable comparison with the best in the gold-dredging industry.

To Mr. J. M. Newman, a Director of the Company, it is just one among a number of gold dredging enterprises with which he is connected in various countries, now brought satisfactorily to the production stage.

To the Minister of Mines (the Hon. P. C. Webb) it is a further step in the development of the mining industry, a source of revenue, and a chance to turn some rough and ugly country on his beloved Coast into level, well-forested land.

But to the average person it is an impressive and exciting spectacle of tremendous power devoted to a purposeful exploitation of the West Coast's potential riches. Here one thrills to the sight of the majesty of machinery in action, where boulders are the playthings of an octopus which reaches down with one huge arm to pluck out the bowels of the earth for its own consumption, and then after shaking them and sifting them and sluicing them and nibbling them—searching ceaselessly for the gold among the dross—throws the whole lot into the air with another monstrous arm and drops them crashing and barren back to the earth from which they were reft. And all the while it mutters menacingly, to the gold that glitters and the gold that hides—the Spanish “No Pasaran”—it shall not pass.

And to the eye of the man of vision, of whom Mr. James A. Murdoch (Chairman of the District's County Council) is an eloquent example, it is the dream ship of M'Andrews’ Hymn come to life:

“Uplift am I? When first in store the new-made beasties stood,
Were Ye cast down that breathed the word declarin’ all things good?
Not so! O’ that warld-liftin’ joy no after-fall could vex,
Ye've left a glimmer still to cheer the Man—the Arrtifex!
That holds, in spite o’ knock and scale, o’ friction, waste and slip,
And by that light—now, mark my word — we'll build the Perfect Ship.”

Production from modern dredges, like those at Kanieri, or Rimu Flat, or Barrytown are bringing a second spring to the West Coast; but unlike the earlier unorganised wild rush of the gold fever days, this promises a steadier industry, with years of work ahead. And in place of the desolation left from the former workings—the abandoned townships and waste areas of boulder dumps—there will grow levelled and smiling areas of forest and farm land.

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