MICA MINING
process.” The test, it is said, showed £5 of gold to the ton, whereas the company was saving with plates and cloths only 10/- per ton.
As stated in another chapter, Timothy Linahan and party were the first to find gold in The Basin, in 1866. The party was: T. Linahan, W. Casey, D. Shine, C. O’Driscoll, S. Sheehan, and Daniel Dennehy. Dennehy and O’Driscoll left the party before it struck rich gold, and walked to Greymouth, taking with them the first parcel of gold that left Charleston for sale. Dennehy had previously been a passenger to Brighton on the first trip of the P.S. Woodpecker to what is now known as Woodpecker Bay, but instead of remaining there pushed overland to Charleston and joined Linahan. He returned from Greymouth to Addison’s Flat rush in 1867, where he opened a store. His son, Frank, now of Barrytown, is believed to have been the first boy born in that town. He returned to Charleston about 1870, and became landlord of the Pioneer and Royal Hotels.
The establishment of goldfields upon the South-West Coast was not favoured by the Provincial Council of Canterbury, in which province Westland was until 1873. In 1863, Reuben Waite suggested to the Superintendent that a reward be offered for the discovery of a payable goldfield in the Grey district. Four months after, he tells, he received a reply deprecating the suggestion and stating that “the discovery of a goldfield in that part of the country would be of no benefit to Canterbury.”
Early in 1874 the press of that province expressed the opinions that the West Coast was “the best place for locating a central convict settlement”; and that if, after all, a goldfield were to be “forced upon Canterbury without the consent, and contrary to the expressed desire of the settlers,” they must submit to Fate.
MICA MINING.
Mica was plentiful about Charleston, and had been reported by Mr. Loveridge in 1878. In later years when the supply of gold had dwindled, a mica mine was opened close to the sea edge, a little south of Constant Bay.
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