Shantytown  Gold

Gold – The Greatest Treasure Hunt!
Did you know?


Despite its value, gold has relatively few modern uses.  It is mostly used for jewellery and decoration.  Gold is also kept in gold bars as bank reserves.  It can be mixed with other metals and made into an alloy to be used for dental work.  Gold is used in arthritis injections, and in places that need a good conductor of heat or electricity.

Major Gold Discoveries of the West Coast Gold fields.
1864 April:  Maori Point at Greenstone Creek – Taramakau.  Albert Hunt
        September:  Kapitea Creek, 11 miles south of Greymouth.
        November:  Totara River and Donnelly’s Creek (branch of Totara)

1865 April:  Gold in payable quantities from Buller to Totara.
       April:  Hokitika - Kaniere, Eight Mile, Blue Spur.
July:  Grey River – Twelve Mile, Red Jack’s, No Name, Nelson Creek, Maori Gully,   and Moonlight.
       August:  Jones’ Creek (Ross).
       November:  Okarito, ‘Five Mile’ Beach.
       December:  By the end of 1865 all beaches from Okarito in the south to north of the          Greymouth had been rushed.
1866:  Darkies Terrace – Addison (Negro) at Point Elizabeth, Barrytown.
         October:  Buller, Inangahua, Charleston, Fox’s River.
1867   May:  Addison’s Flat.
1870:  Quartz at Inangahua – Murray’s Creek, Reefton, Boatman’s.
1876:  Kumara, Dillmanstown, Larrikins, Dunedin Flat (diggers from Otago).
1882:  Rimu.
Gold Fields in New Zealand.
Methods of Gold Mining:

Panning:
Panning is a method of finding small specks of alluvial gold.  A shovelful of ‘wash dirt’ was put in the pan, and then rocked gently side to side.  This ensured that the gold, which is much heavier than rock, sank to the bottom.  A small amount of unwanted stones and gravel was then washed over the lip.  This action of shake and wash was repeated until, if the miner was lucky, only gold remained in the bottom of the pan.

Cradling:
Cradling allows for larger amounts of alluvial gold to be found.  Wash dirt was placed in the ‘hopper’ at the top, and then the cradle was rocked side to side as water was poured in.  The gold, being heavier, would travel downwards through the small holes in the bottom of the hopper.  It would be trapped in the riffles below, while the water took the bigger pieces of gravel out of the cradle.
Sluicing:
This was a larger scale operation, needing several men.  A stream of water was shot at high speed at a cliff face.  The water slowly washed away the face, taking gold, gravel and stones with it.  The larger stones would be raked away.  The water would take the gold into a sluice box, and the gold would be trapped in the riffles or coconut matting in the floor of the box.

Dredges and tailings that they leave behind

Dredging was a large scale operation for gold retrieval.  A dredge was a large floating barge powered by steam or electricity.  Buckets on chains scooped up the gravel and sand from the bottom of the pond underneath it.  The gravel was then passed through sluice boxes and gold tables to separate out the gold.  The tailings were then dumped behind the dredge.  Huge mounds of tailings can still be seen in various parts of the South Island.

Chronology of events in gold mining

1852Charles Ring discovers gold at
Coromandel
1856Gold rush to Collingwood-Takaka
1861Gabriel Read discovers gold in
Otago, followed by a gold rush
1862Gold rush to Marlborough
1865Gold rush to West Coast
1866Record gold production of 735,000
oz (over 22 tonnes)
1875Gold rush to Waihi
1878Discovery of Martha vein
1881World's first successful steam-powered dredge begins work on Clutha River
1889World's first commercial use of cyanide solution gold recovery at
Karangahake
1951Closure of Globe-Progress mine, Reefton
1952Closure of Martha mine, Waihi
1972Gold price $US58
1973Gold price floated
1975NZ gold production falls below 2000 oz, the lowest since mining began
late 1970sResumption of hard rock gold exploration
1980Gold price reaches $US612
1988Martha opencast mine opens at Waihi
1990Macraes mine opens in Otago
1992Production commences from Golden Cross mine in Coromandel
1997Passage of legislation banning mining on DoC land on northern Coromandel
and other areas
1998Gold price falls below $US300
1998Golden Cross mine closes in Coromandel
2000Macraes and Martha mines each produce 1 millionth oz

New Zealand Gold Output - 1857 to 2002

The history of gold mining
In the 1830s a group of convicts, ship deserters and whalers who had settled on Beesons Island near the entrance to Coromandel Harbour reported discovering gold, but this and other reports about this time attracted little interest.
It was the discovery of gold in the South Island that led to a series of gold rushes and the establishment of what soon became a major industry. In 1856, gold was found in the Aorere Valley, and a gold rush to the Collingwood-Takaka district followed. Gabriel Read reported the discovery of gold in the gravels of the Waitahuna and Tuapeka rivers in 1861, and a major gold rush to Central Otago followed. There was a smaller rush to Marlborough the following year, and rushes to finds on the West Coast in 1865 and 1866. Recorded gold production in 1866 reached 735,000 ounces (over 22 tonnes), a level that has not been exceeded since then.

The early miners used primitive equipment, gold pans and sluice boxes with the gold-bearing gravel being shoveled by hand. Hydraulic methods using high-pressure water were developed to work elevated terrace deposits, and water races were built over long distances, often through rough terrain, to convey water to the mine sites. As the more accessible, near-surface deposits were worked, attention turned to the large gravel deposits along the main rivers, particularly the Clutha River and its tributaries in Otago.

After numerous unsuccessful attempts, the first steam powered dredges started work on the Clutha River in 1881. The world's first commercially successful gold dredge was the Dunedin, which continued to operate in the Clutha River until 1901 by which time it had recovered 17,000 ounces (528 kg) of gold. More than 200 gold dredges operated in Otago and Southland between the 1890s and 1915.

Hard rock gold mining took longer to get established, requiring capital and expertise beyond the capacity of the alluvial miners. Gold production from quartz vein deposits commenced in the early 1860s with rock crushing batteries being set up to crush the gold-bearing rocks to allow the gold to be recovered. In 1867 the goldfield at Thames started producing, and in 1875 the Waihi area became open to prospecting. A gold rush followed but the miners failed to recognise the potential of the quartz vein deposits they discovered, including the Martha vein, discovered at Waihi in 1878.
Gold in the quartz veins of the Hauraki district is very fine grained and was difficult to recover using the methods available at the time. The first commercial use of a new process using cyanide solution to recover gold was at the Crown Battery at Karangahake in 1889. The Government bought the New Zealand rights to the cyanide process, and users had paid off the Government investment by 1905.

The success of the cyanide process led to a major expansion of the Martha mine, which by 1903 was the largest gold mine in New Zealand. The Victoria battery at Waikino was expanded, the Cornish pumphouse (which is still standing) was completed and new underground workings were developed. By 1911 Waihi had a population of 6500 and was the largest town in the region. When the Martha mine eventually closed in 1952 it had produced about 5 million ounces of gold (155 tonnes) and 35 million ounces (1088 tonnes) of silver from nearly 11 million tonnes of ore which was mined almost exclusively by underground methods. The mine is still worked today as an open pit and is the largest known hard rock mineral deposit in New Zealand.

Elsewhere in the Hauraki Goldfield, gold-silver production is recorded from several hundred mines working about 50 separate deposits. The total value of gold and silver produced from the Hauraki Goldfield is about $6700 million at current metal prices.

While alluvial gold mining dominated in the South Island after the gold rushes, hard rock mines were developed in Nelson, Westland and Otago. The Reefton Goldfield, on the West Coast of the South Island, produced more than 2 million ounces (62 tonnes) of gold from 1870 until 1951. The largest producer was the Blackwater mine at Waiuta. Gold was also produced from the gold-scheelite veins of Otago from the early 1870s but it was not until the Macraes mine was developed in 1990 that the region became a significant producer of gold from hard-rock mining.

Throughout most of the 20th century, production declined due mainly to the falling real price of gold. As the hard rock gold mines closed and gold dredging diminished, soon only the Kanieri dredge on the Taramakau River remained as a significant gold producer.

Rising gold prices from the mid-1970s led to a surge of investment in gold exploration and production after more than 50 years of decline. At its peak in the mid-1980s about 20 exploration companies were active and a string of discoveries were made, including the Martha and Golden Cross mines at Waihi, the Macraes mine in Otago, and the Globe-Progress prospect at Reefton. Gold production increased from less than 10,000 ounces (311 kg) in 1983 to 390,000 ounces (12 tonnes) in 1995, an output last achieved 80 years ago.