This educational film from 1967 explains how minerals are subtracted from sand, separated, then purified, before being exported from Australia to the rest of the world. The film is directed by John Shaw, photographed by Leo Elia and George Alexander, and produced by John Martin Jones, with sound by Gordon Wraxall. The Commonwealth Film Unit presents “Golden Sands” in co-operation with Australian National Film Board News and Information Bureau, RCA, and Eastman Colour.
A man is surfing amongst swimmers (00:09). People relaxing on a crowded beach (00:16). Large waves crashing (00:48). An empty, white-sanded beach (00:54). “Golden Sands” title banner (01:07). Scenic views of the nearly deserted beach and nearby ocean (01:13). The mining of minerals such as; rutile, zircon, and ilmenite in the sands of the eastern and western shorelines of Australia (01:49). Industrial mineral mining plant (02:04). The process of extracting the minerals from the sand is done through either a floating dredge in man-made ponds (03:14), a sluicing process inland from where the ocean has receded (03:44) or using heavy machinery to dig up and separate sands loaded with minerals (03:52). The raw minerals go through a separation plant, to sort the minerals from each other using methods of gravity, electrical tension, and magnetism (05:03). Bags containing the final processed minerals (05:33). The minerals are exported to other parts of the world at shipping terminals (05:49). The bags are loaded onto ships (06:20). Trucks unloading piles of sand onto white wastelands (06:34). Two young men working in a greenhouse (07:08), before the contents are planted to fertilize the beaches after the mineral-subtraction (07:26). Demonstrations of how sand has been used for medical purposes, in the shipbuilding industry, for sharper images in color television, in the production of radioactive materials, for molds and jewelry, and the building of airplanes and rocket ships (07:32). QANTAS jet aircraft takes off from airport runway as credits roll.
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