Fred Cuthbert
p. 31 · Read in the full issue
Dead
He Established His Misima ‘Bonanza’ When Aged 80
ONE of the best known mining men of the Australian-Pacific Territories, Mr, “Freddie” Cuthbert, died in Bris bane on October 25, aged 92. Having made and lost two or three fortunes, he entered Papua mining when he was 77 years old, and established a “Bonanza” on Misima Island; and when he died he was worth, perhaps, a quarter-million.
Frederick William Cuthbert was born in London; but he was working in a grocer’s shop in Sydney before he was 20.
In a long and restless life, he became in terested in mining in Queensland, and he was a storekeeper on the well-known Croydon goldfield when he earned the title of “King of Croydon.” He had great suc cesses and great losses—he twice made a fortune of £30,000 or £40,000, and twice lost it by unwise investment in goldmines.
About 1929, Mr. Cuthbert went to Misima, Eastern Papua, and became in terested in the wreck of the famous Block Ten Mine. This was the show on which the BH Company had lost nearly half a million, back in the World War I period.
There was an extremely rich loda on Misima, but the cost of working it was huge, and finally BH abandoned it. It had been worked, on and off, by local syndicates, for some years, when Cuth bert formed New Misima Gold Mines Ltd. and took over the leases in 1929. The new owners were both clever and lucky.
In the ’thirties, New Misima was paying an annual dividend of 120 per cent.; Cuthbert himself made £lOO,OOO in seven years. His oldest associates were A. Pym (now a resident of Sydney), G. O. Wilkin son (dead) —both directors—and Jim Quinterall, who was underground man ager, and whose good work made phenomenal success possible.
They sold the mine, in 1935, to Cuth berts Misima Goldmine Ltd., for a large ium in cash, but they retained sub stantial interests in it. Although now in his eighties, the indefatigable “Freddie” returned to speculative gold mining enterprises in Queensland. He was in jured in a severe fall, last July, and he failed rapidly in recent weeks. He died a bachelor.