Historic Mine Site

Beneath the Auckland soil lies a story of gold fever. The Historic Mine Site whispers tales of dreams and disappointments. Commercial interests in Auckland offered a hefty reward in the 1850s. A prize of £500 was offered to anyone who could find payable gold nearby. This was a time when some New Zealand settlers were leaving for the Californian and Australian gold rushes. In September 1852, Charles Ring, a timber merchant, claimed the prize. He made a find in Coromandel. A brief gold rush ensued around Coromandel township, Cape Colville and Mercury Bay. Only £1500 of gold was accessible in river silt. More gold lay locked within quartz veins, inaccessible to individual prospectors. The Historic Mine Site’s initial rush was short-lived, lasting only about three months. Despite the initial setback, prospectors, with the help of the Maori, continued to explore. New discoveries were made in Collingwood in Golden Bay in 1856, Gabriels Gully in Otago in 1861, Wakamarina in Marlborough in 1864, and at Greenstone Creek on the West Coast also in 1864. Not all discoveries led to significant finds. The most substantial were on the Coromandel Peninsula, in Otago, and on the West Coast. These areas experienced significant gold rushes and decades of mining. In the 1860s, early mining in Otago and on the West Coast was primarily undertaken by individuals. They worked alluvial deposits in river gravels. In three separate years in the late 1860s and early 1870s, the amount of gold extracted exceeded 20,000 kilograms. These totals have never been surpassed. From the 1870s, mining became more mechanized. Companies were formed, and dredges and sluicing ventures extracted increasing amounts of gold. Underground mining, which involved tunneling out quartz veins and crushing them to release the gold within, boomed on the Coromandel Peninsula and West Coast from the 1870s. Gold mining declined by the 1920s. From the 1950s onward, it became a very small industry. The rise of gold prices in the late 1970s brought about a revival. New technology allowed opencast pits to be dug in Otago and on the Coromandel Peninsula in the 1980s and 1990s. The Historic Mine Site stands as a testament to this boom and bust cycle. It represents a small but significant part of New Zealand’s gold mining history.