"There be gold in them there hills" (and rivers)

Blog 14 - On the trail of gold and a hot bath!

(PIC) - Business building 1868....

(PIC) - A typical Thames house.....

After a lovely evening in our Victorian palace we made an early start on a beautiful Sunday morning. Thames town itself is a reminder of the past with old wooden buildings dating back to the 1860s. This was a town built on the effects of the gold rush. At its peak it was NZ's second biggest town with 18000 residents next to Dunedin in South Island.

The local Maori tribe who owned all the land here at the time of the first discovery agreed to lease the gold field areas to the Settlers at £5000 per annum, a huge amount in those days such was the importance of the gold strike at Thames and in the surrounding hills.

Without hopefully boring you silly finding gold in New Zealand came in two main forms: -

(PIC insert) - Alluvial gold panned from streams ......

(1) - Alluvial meaning gold broken down from inside its original rock home and moved over centuries by water falls and glaciers etc. Therefore this type is found in rivers and creeks usually way down stream of its actual source in the mountains. Found by panning and using sluice boxes, literarily shaking and washing fine grit to separate specs of gold from other materials, very hard back braking graft. This was the method the early miners or diggers used in the mid 1800s. When the panning mix was too fine they used a clever 'tinning' process. This involved rubbing mercury in their pans to trap the gold (These two elements have a chemical affinity and are attracted to each other). 
The Prospector then placed his pan in the fire to 'melt' the resulting amalgam, which would then be placed in a hollowed out potato, wired together and thrown in the fire. The spud would then be cooked until it was black on the outside. At this point the mercury was absorbed by the potato, leaving the pure gold inside. Pretty dash clever and probably derived the phrase 'hot potato' meaning I am in a spot of bother here, my gold is gone!

(PIC insert) - Gold deposit within quartz rock....

(2) - Gold Ore - the gold is still inside the rock typically in quartz ore veins or reefs and therefore close to the source in the mountains (open cast) or deep underground (mine shafts). The gold nugget was retrieved by breaking into the rocks - this production came later in the century when machinery (called stamper batteries were used to crush the ore. This method was very wasteful and much of the gold was lost in the dust particles. Chemicals (usually cyanide and zinc) were used with the fine dust and rubble and the resultant reaction of the two chemicals separated the remaining gold which was filtered off. This was very successful but a hazardous effect on the environment and was subsequently banned in many countries. Most of the gold in the Coromandel was of the Gold Ore type. The first commercial use of a new process using cyanide solution to recover gold was at the Crown Battery at Karangahake Gorge where we are travelling to later to stay overnight at a lodge B&B in the gorge and very close to the location of the old batteries.

It was a difficult and expensive job mining for quartz and only the big investor companies could find the resources. The Coromandel went on to become the largest tonnage source of gold in NZ. The only other regions that came close in output were both in the South islands on the West coast and Otago. We are visiting these areas in later blogs.

Out of interest, there is a 2103 Booker Prize winning novel called 'The Luminaries' by Eleanor Catton that is set in the early 1860's Prospectors era, I would recommend this as a very good read and tells of the gold rush days in NZ.

We visited several places of interest including pump and mining museums, old heritage building before winding our way around the coast to find the Hot Water Beach attraction on the Coromandel Coast.

(PIC) - The claiming of your piece of hot beach.....

A short walk from the road and through some bush and there it was, a truly unique Kiwi experience. An underground river of hot water flows from the interior of the earth to surface in the Pacific Ocean at this stunning beach – a long beautiful white beach located between Tairua and Whitianga. The stunning beach overlooks the Pacific Ocean and offshore Castle Rock, Pohutukawa (the native NZ Christmas tree) lined cliffs at either end of the beach. This area is generally known as Mercury Bay

Two hours either side of low tide is the best time to find hot water bubbling through the golden sand. Loads of visitors were here digging their own spa pool in the sand and others lying back and relaxing while the steam from their hot pool envelops them. There is a good sharing policy going on, the old "I will leave my beach towel here and come back later" policy just does not work.

(PIC) - sitting in the hot pool.....

Some volcanos develop huge underground reservoirs of superheated water. Over time, this water will escape to the surface, cooling on the way. There are two 'fissures' at Hot Water Beach releasing water as hot as 65c (150f) at a rate as high as 15 litres per minute. This water contains large amounts of salt (NOT salt water), calcium, magnesium, potassium, fluorine, bromine and silica (so I am told for I am no scientist!). There are other hot water springs nearby but the location of these two springs on the beach make them unique. With the ebb and flow of the tide each individually created hot pool is washed away clearing the way for the next influx of visitors to Hot Water Beach in the Coromandel.

We travelled on to the beautiful mine location at Karangahake Gorge where the old stamper 
battery location can still be seen  although the actual buildings are now just  foundations with a 
few information boards in place. You can walk through to the old mines and tracks up in the 
mountains and it's a picturesque scene far removed from the days of hundreds of mine, a smell 
of chemicals and the thumping of the stamper batteries. 

(PIC) - The Bridge at the Gorge.....

(PIC) - The Miners path......

(PIC) - old stamper batteries site......

(PIC) - The Lodge B&B......

After leaving a lovely garden lodge B&B we visited the town of 

Paeroa which was built in the days of the gold rush. Today it is a place full of antique shops and curios from that period. The layoutof the town is a typical NZ provincial one but you could be 

mistaken that you were in the Brighton Lanes or Buxton. In fact 

this town is a Buxton - it has its own spa water and still produces 100 years on NZ's most popular brand of soft drink L&P. It has a unique lemon twist to it and is very refreshing indeed.

(PIC) - The Hobbits are around somewhere!....

We are now heading for Mata Mata and a complete 
change of scenery from coast lines, hot water gold and the Maori culture. 

It's time for all you "Lord of the Rings" fans to wake up because we are visiting Hobbiton, the home of the Hobbits.

Blog 15 to follow 
DKT