Golden Age Passing

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 933, 28 March 1930, Page 8

Golden Age Passing

GLAMOUR WHICH WAS AUCKLAND'S

THE flourishing- years of gold discoveries in New Zealand. with Romance and Adventure as attendants, are shadowy memories in the life of modern New Zealand. Those years brought astounding development in Auckland Province, but, even today, the pages of the declining yields of famous mines are being written.

Perhaps the northern mines did not know the frenzy of the great rush to Gabriel’s Gully, Otago, in IS6O, when miners from Victoria, West Australia and the gravel beds of California piled off all manner of vessels at Port Chalmers. But the “old-timers” one still finds near the fields of Thames, always anxiously prospecting, can tell coloured stories of better years.

The handing over of the plant at the Grand Junction Mine, Waihi, to the wreckers, marks the approach of the twilight of extinction following, as it does, the wrecking of the Crown and the Talisman mines. Martha mine, which shone brightly in the dawn of the field, is now the sole luminary, a golden orb In the darkness overwhelming one of the most famous of our gold-producing areas.

Gold was first found in New Zealand in 1842 in Massacre Bay. Later, the discovery of immensely profitable fields in Australia fired the imagination of colonists here and the Government offered rewards for the finding of deposits of the metal. In Auckland, where Government actions are not viewed favourably, the citi».ans formed a “Reward Committee” In 1852 and promised a prize of £SOO for the discovery of gold in the province. CALIFORNIAN’S DISCOVERY A migrant from California, by the name of Ring, claimed the £SOO within two months, showing that he had found gold at the Kapanga Stream, Coromandel. Over 3,000 miners hurried to the find and won £II,OOO worth of gold, though Ring did not receive the promised £SOO. For nine years the field was abandoned until fresh finds brought another rush. In 1867, *the Shotover claim was found at the Thames by Hunt’s party, and a great deal of gold made the proprietors wealthy. Within three years 11,000 miners’ rights had been taken out. The Golden Crown paid £200,000 in dividends in one year, only to be dwarfed by the Caledonia, which produced ten tons of gold in 12 months and furnished £6OOIOOO in dividends to its shareholders. As Thames waned, Waihi came like a comet into the firmament. The Martha lode was the first big producer. The original Waihi company was

formed in 1887, taking over the Union and the Rosemount areas, and later the Martha Extended. The mine site was marked hv a great clay gap in the hills, indicating where a huge bite had been bitten away by human force. The mine had its ore treated at the Victoria battery, Waikino. Tramlines traversed the camp (it was governed by a Progress Committee for many years until it became a borough), leading to other batteries, such as Union and Silverton. Puffing locomotives toiled up and down, tugging long rakes of ore-laden trucks, that slid down from the poppet decks. Men toiled 1,000 feet below the surface, hacking out the mineral-bearing ore.

The boom at Waihi was in the middle nineties. Karangahake, with New Zealand, Talisman, Woodstock and New Zealand Crown mines, and Waitekauri, Golden Cross and Walkino all flourished. The Waihi mine in 12 years yielded £1,746,500 worth of gold. The richness of the reefs attracted much English and Continen tal capital and mines were opened wherever gold was suspected. 80 MINES WORKING

In 1900, more than 80 mines were crushing ore in the Auckland Province, most of them along the hills from Waihi to Coromandel Peninsula. The Grand Junction was about the last of tbe major efforts by outside capitalists to exploit Waihi. A remarkably complete plant was Installed and for years the output was satisfactory. In more recent times the Junction came under the control of the Waihi company and has virtually died on its hands. At one recent failure in the supplying of electric power to Auckland Province, the electric generating plant at the Junction came in as an assisting plant. Presently the plant will be scattered to the ends of the Dominion, and even to Australia.

Auckland of the late sixties and the seventies was wholly the product of the goldfields. It leaned on them until well into this century and even now does not despise the help that may come from them. But Thames, Waihi, Te Aroha, Coromandel and Te Puke are changing from the mineral to butter production and wealth that is certain. The golden age is' passing.