This town was the site of a big gold rush in the second half of the nineteenth century. Apparently at the gold rush's peak the town's population exceeded the population of Auckland, which is very surprising considering that this town is only as big as if not smaller than Manchester, MD. I took a tour through the old mine. Pictures are below. The guide and I had to hunch over to walk through the mine shafts. When the mine was operating a lot of gold was lost because the process used to separate the gold from all the other minerals in the rock was only about 40% efficient. The guide said most of the gold that was lost just washed into the surrounding bay, but it would be too expensive to re-excavate it. The guide had all of the old machinery and he turned it on to show me the process. He had all the materials for separating gold too, including a small vial of mercury. I got to hold it, which was pretty cool. The sound from the paddles that crushed all of the extracted rocks was extremely loud. We had to wear earmuffs when he turned it on. During the mine's heyday (it was in operation between the 1860s and 1900) there were 800 of the crushers running (only 3 were on when I was there), and they would be on 24hrs a day, 6 days a week. The sound from the crushers could be heard within about a 20km radius, but the townspeople got so used to hearing them that when they were turned off on Sunday they couldn't sleep because of the quiet. It would definitely take a while to get used to them. 3 were loud enough!
Going on to the top of the Coromandel Peninsula tomorrow. Supposed to be a fertile fruit region so I'll see what I can find. I cooked my first meal tonight- pasta with a mix of vegetables. Turned out decent. Still needs some work but I'm sure I'll get plenty of practice. There's a chance of rain so I might be delayed.
The gold and other minerals were separated on this table. It vibrated really strongly, and the gold and silver would stay at the top since they were the heaviest while all the other minerals ran down to the bottom.
Gold and silver were futher purified and separated from the mercury extract here. The final ingots had both gold and silver mixed, and the two would only be separated at a mint.
The gray lines in the rock to the left are what indicate the presence of gold and silver. The rock is quartz. The rock to the right is iron pyrite- Fool's Gold.
This is the entrance to the middle level mine shaft. There were five levels in all.
No comments:
Post a Comment