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New Zealand Gold Mining

Gold in New Zealand has taken very interesting twists and turns over the years - with first discovery made at the Coromandel’s Kapanga creek in 1852, the activities have flourished ever since. The discoveries of gold in the south island led to a number of ‘gold rushes’ which fueled gold extraction activities to became a major industry in early New Zealand’s gold history. Such activities led to the great number of immigrants in New Zealand and these Immigrants came from China, Asia, Great Britain. This led the New Zealand’s populations to double. Recorded production in 1866 was recorded at 735,000 ounces which is about 22 tones – and this amount has never been exceeded ever since.

Early miners used convectional or traditional methods to extract gold and this gold was mainly the placer deposits. These methods were the use of pans and sluice boxes, hydraulic methods which used high pressure water were later utilized, after depletion of the surface alluvial gold attention to the large gravel deposit was later addressed, most activities were done along the Clutha River.

 

The miners then resulted to extracting gold by the use of powered dredged. The world’s first successful dredge is said to have been operated in New Zealand. Hard mining was avoided due to its cost of operation and also miners lacked expertise to extract gold through the underground mine methods. It was not until early 1860 when hard rock gold was invented by use of crushing batteries, which were used to crack rocks to enable gold to be recovered.

 

The cyanide process was latter used to recover gold and this was not until 1903. This process was widely used in Martha mine which at this time was the largest mine in New Zealand. It later closed in 1952, having had produced 5 million ounces of in it life operation.

 

Ever since then the gold industry has gone through its up and down, but it stands today to be a very important industry in the economic welfare of the newzelanders. Today the countries production stands at approximately 11.8 tones and these gold compounds still exist as alluvial deposits and the hard gold. The alluvial deposits are mined in North and South Island.

 

The two largest underground mines are located in East Otago, at the Macres Mine and the Martha Mine in Waihi - these three mines contribute much to the annual gold production. The mines operate under environmental guidelines standards.

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