Business !

About This Mining

By L.H.W. (Papua)

glorious tropic sun beats down * on us no longer. Those tropic showers no longer belt us into the sanctuary of a trade umbrella. Not on your life! We are now sheltering under 800 or 900 feet of good old Mother Earth —mining.

Things got a bit too hot for us on the surface, what with debt collectors and other problems of civilised life. So we are now at a bearing of 75 degrees 32 minutes from where we used to be. Any how, that’s what the surveyor told us and we were too dumbfounded to contra dict him. After all, he may be right— it’s certainly a hell of a place to get to!

We have become so engrossed with the

scope and possibilities of mining that next year we intend to forego the Mel bourne Cup and put our ten bob into mining shares. The only difference is that! occasionally in a mine every horse runs last.

Mark Twain once said, in all good 'faith, “A mine is a hole in the ground owned by a liar.” Our hole is not one like that. No, we don’t own it!

It’s one of those mines that are worked by big companies with so much money they don’t know what to do with it, and decide to excavate some gold to send to America or one of those countries where they make gold teeth., It is a very inter esting business. We have even known men who lost all their interest and sometimes all their capital—in it.

We intend some day ta become one of the many prominent mining engineers of the world. Nothing like being one of the mob!

If we ever succeed in getting the low down on cube roots and algebraic expres sions we will enter the employ of one of these Islands companies, and write out reports. We will speak at length on vari cose veins running through obstropulous country probably belonging to the lower strata. This report will be read out in secret to the blokes with all the dough.

Not having the slightest idea what it all means, they will say it sounds a good thing and “ante” up.

We will then be sent to open up a mine, at a salary of a hundred a month. a while we’ll dig 'some holes in the ground and make ourselves comfor table for life. That is, until the blokes With The dough come along-To see what we’re doing. That will be hard to ex plain.

Anyhow, who said they wanted gold teeth?

Another thing. Suppose we dig up the mainspring. Why, the dashed old world might stop revolving, gravity would so overcome centrifugal force that we’d only be a blot on the landscape. Here’s hoping!