Friday 21 March 2025

We were on the plane, about to fly to Auckland for the weekend when the captain came on the PA system stating there had been a bit of an incident and they were checking with Auckland to see if the plane was safe to fly. It turned out some clown had driven the baggage cart somewhat too eagerly towards the aircraft and put a ding in the plane and a dent in our plans. The captain came back on the PA announcing that we weren’t going anywhere, the flight was cancelled. As there were no other flights available to Auckland that day we headed home towards Queensberry, stopping at the Goldfields Mining Centre by the Kawarau River, for lunch and a look around the old gold fields tourist attraction.

After walking around the track and looking at some reconstructed huts showing how the predominantly Chinese miners had lived, several sealed off tunnels, odd bits of sluicing equipment and a restored stamping battery we headed home.

 

Saturday 22 March 2025

In the late 1990’s I had visited a place called Welshtown, up on the hill behind Bendigo station, with the family. Given that we had an unexpected day at home, Sylvia and I decided to go back and check it out. The lower parts of Bendigo Station are now lush vineyards, with many of the flat areas around the district now irrigated. Things have changed considerably from the last visit. What was just a rough track running up the hillside has become a well-utilised and maintained gravel road. The hills back then were almost completely barren, to the point I am sure the sheep used to eat rocks. Over the last 30-years a considerable amount of Manuka has grown around the mine sites.

Back in the 1860’s-80’s it must have been quite a populated area. Most of the miners built their houses out of irrigated iron so they could dismantle them easily when they moved on but there are still the remains of many stone buildings along with the chimney from what was the local school a bit further down the hillside. While the earliest miners focused on alluvial gold, panning the rivers and creeks, later miners focused on deep mining the quartz reefs, a much more labour intensive process involving blasting deep pits in the schist rock,

We strolled along the track, through the kanuka, passing the odd deep mine shaft. In other places the miners had just blasted into the solid rock. These were often identifiable by a mound of shingle, a bit like the tailings from a rather large rabbit hole. Eventually we came to what had been the Matilda battery, a large device with piston like mechanisms used for crushing the rock to release the gold. Alongside the battery site was the main mine shaft, which went down several hundred feet into the hillside, with tunnels running off it at various depths chasing gold seams.

From there we strolled around the bottom of the hill to the number 2 shaft, which was  dug over 7 years in the 1870’s, going down over 200 metres, again with tunnels running off it, many unsuccessfully chasing gold. Despite many efforts, it appears only one company made a good return from their labour. All mining in the area ceased in 1902. Nowadays most of the shafts are covered with wire mesh, which bought back memories of my mother standing looking into one of the uncovered pits when we were here in the 90’s. When someone said ‘be careful Dylis, you might fall in’ her response was ‘I’ve had my three score years and ten; if I fall in just chuck some dirt over me’.

We drove back down the hill and stopped at the site of the Bendigo Gold Light Dredge. This was another somewhat unsuccessful attempt to mine gold in the area. The dredge was put in a pond, the theory being to dig up the ground under the water, sluice it and take out the gold. This was done during the depression in the 1930’s, with subsidies from the government. The only people that made any money from this were Mr Fulton and Mr Hogan, who lived in a nearby hut and dug out the pond to put the dredge in. This was the first project of what has become a major trans-Tasman enterprise.

We headed east up Matilda Road and onto Thompson’s Gorge Road to another gold mining site. In 1908 The Come in Time mining company was formed and moved half of the 20-stamp Matilda battery from the Welshtown site to this new location. It has recently been completely restored. Just below the road is a tunnel going into the hillside, which was open and accessible, so with Sylvia waiting outside, I headed about 30 metres inside until the light from my cellphone was not strong enough for me to proceed safely any further.

Getting back in the car, we decided we should follow Thompson’s Gorge Road through the hillside to Omakau. As we headed up the hill we noticed roading and flat areas, almost like building platforms, in various places with lots of ‘hazardous – do not enter’ signs. No it’s not a new subdivision, the gold rush is on again. As we headed further up the hill we could see drilling rigs in operation.The Santana mining company has been doing a lot of exploration in the area and is looking for consent to build a large open-cast mine.

As we continued, we had some spectacular views up various valleys and down into gulleys. It was interesting to see the number of tracks that have been pushed into this country over the years. There is even a buried telephone cable that runs through this gorge, which must have been a huge effort to dig with the amount of rock in the ground. In places the road was a little interesting, at one stage a creek ran along the road, or the road ran along the creek – we’re not quite sure but we made it through, popping out an hour and a half later in Omakau.

From there we headed back through Clyde and along Lake Dunstan home.