BANKS AND CURRENCY
the ready cash market they offered for gold in small or large parcels, and its conveyance to Westport under police escort. The gatherers were thus relieved of the necessity for hoarding, with the attendant risk of theft, or of selling or bartering to traders at less than actual value. In addition to purchases over the counter, each bank employed a gold-buyer who visited each claim-holder for the purpose of purchasing his gold, thus bringing the market to his back door, and relieving him of the necessity of losing valuable hours of work when good returns were being made and every hour counted. Prosperous miners were wooed by the rival buyers as keenly as were electors at an election, or a newly-arrived danseuse at the casino. The duties of a gold-buyer on the Coast called for shrewdness and a close knowledge of gold values. Not all gold was of the highest quality or purity: alloys were present in varying proportions, and the assays of different localities varied considerably. Some diggers, aware of this, were not above offering gold from a low-grade spot while declaring that it was from a high-grade one. While the standard value of pure gold was £4 per ounce, much was not worth more than from £3/12/- to £3/18/-. Most of Charleston gold was high-grade when the gold was smelted.
Discovered in 1866, Charleston was by the end of 1867 a thriving township, an isolated settlement in a wilderness; its rapid growth was remarkable. The Nelson Evening Mail of 4th March, 1866, stated: “The annals of colonisation contain no record more remarkable than the progress of events on the West Coast of this Island. Fifteen months ago, the whole of the country between the great range and the sea, from Cape Foulwind to Cape Providence, a distance of nearly 500 miles, was as unknown as the interior of Africa . . . now a population of 25,000 souls has settled in the desert, producing and exporting gold to the value of £200,000 every month.”
The goldfields were profitable to the banks, and the latter paid large dividends in the early days. In 1867-1868 the Bank of New South Wales paid 18%, the Bank of New Zealand 17%, the Union Bank of Australia 17%.
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