Thar’s gold in them thar hills!

Cold (21C) and rainy today. Margie decided a book in bed looked more attractive than a hike in
the mountains, so Phil explored by himself.

New Zealand had a gold rush in 1880's, but it never panned out. Gold was discovered in the
Waiorongomai Valley, but over the next 40 years the cost of extraction exceeded the value
extracted. Left some great ruins for modern explorers, and a lot of wonderment concerning some of their engineering and business decisions.

The gold itself was in a quartz deposit way up the side of the valley, so they built a rope incline to lower the ore down. It had 2 cars, each at the end of a looooong cable, and a double sheave at the top. One car would be all the way up, the other down. The top car would be loaded with ore, the brake released, and it’s weight was supposed to raise the empty car as it came down. They built a triple track, with each car using 2 of the 3 rails, and at the mid-point it widened to 4 rails so the cars could pass. Great. No power necessary, just a single brakeman. Except each cable weighed 2.5 tons, which was more than the weight of the ore to be lowered. So the bottom, empty, car including it’s fully strong out cable, weighed more than the top, full, car whose cable was wound up on the sheave. Oops.

These pictures show about 1/3 of the incline, the passing zone, a hint as to how steep it was, and
the partially restored head sheave.

They built a water powered a crushing mill at the bottom. It worked for a while, until the dry season came. And even when there was enough water, much of the ore was too tough for that size mill. So several years later someone built a cyanide extraction process. They had tested some ore, and found it to be good enough quality to be worth the expense of that operation. But in real life, once it was built, they found that the test ore was not representative of the strike, so that mill never went into production.

There were several horizontal haul roads to bring the ore from each claim to the central incline. Originally horses carrying ore, then horses hauling carts with ore. Someone got the bright idea of laying track and using a steam engine. So they laid the track. And they bought a steam engine and hauled it overland and over mountain to the site. And it was too big to negotiate some of the curves in the track. So they hauled the steam engine back out, sold it, and went back to horses hauling carts on tracks.

By afternoon Margie was ready for an adventure, so we visited Wairere Falls. 152 meters high! 45 minute tramp up to the base along an incredible DOC track. Stairs, bridges, rocks, more stairs, whatever it took to make a very nice trail. It was still foggy and raining, so the pictures at the falls aren’t very good. We’ll have to come back next time on a sunny day and go swimming. This is what they looked like from the road.