The export of gold from Western Australia for the last ten months of 1898, the latest date at which the figures were available, when I left the colony, amounted to 841,625 ounces. The importance of that statement will be made apparent when I say that for the whole year of 1896 the total output was only 281,265 ounces. Therefore, in two years they have increased the output no less than 560,300 ounces. It was estimated by the Premier of the colony, Sir John Forrest, that the output for the whole year of 1898 would exceed one million ounces.[1] Sir Gerard Smith, the Governor, went further than that, and said that the output for the year 1899 would reach one and a half million ounces of gold. Should Sir Gerard Smith's estimate be realised, and I do not think there is any reason to suspect that it is an extravagant one, then the value of gold produced next year will be close upon £6,000,000.[2]
Kalgoorlie gold is particularly pure, and has more than once fetched £4, 4s. 4d. per ounce. Speaking roughly, the annual dividend forthcoming from Western Australian mines may now, perhaps, be computed at about one and a half millions sterling, or rather over £1 to the ounce of reef gold recorded; a figure which should be much exceeded in the future, but which, as it stands, is a very handsome return on the amount of British capital actually expended in the colony. The amount absorbed in the way of margin or commission by London promoters and the like is quite another story. But of the nominal capital of
- ↑ I have since ascertained that the output for the whole of 1898 was one million and fifty thousand ounces, valued at close on £4,000,000 sterling. But see Appendix I.
- ↑ The official returns for January—June 1899 give 692,875 ounces: value, £2,632,927 (compare £1,788,636 for corresponding period of last year). August returns give 145,000 ounces, or £552,000; the second largest monthly export on record.
