NZ2006 6June Tuesday Athenree

6June06  Tuesday

Today we started out from the Athenree campground and headed back up to Waipi to see the Martha goldmine there.  The goldmine started in the late 1800’s when gold was discovered there.  The mining was originally done with digging shafts down and then horizontally mining off the main shafts.  The growth of the mine continued and peaked around 1909 when there was 1600 miners employed there.  The mining tapered off over the years and it was considered no longer economically feasible in 1952 and the mine was closed. The mine had produced 5.6 million ounces of gold and 38.4 million ounces of silver. Over the years gold recovery from ore improved and in 1987 the mine was reopened as an open pit mine.  We were told that they are currently obtaining about 5 grams per ton of ore processed and that it was economical down to only 0.1 ounce of gold per ton.  Today we were told that the mine would only operate for 7 more days.  The reason is that the top of the pit can’t be made any larger in diameter to allow them to go deeper.

 

The mine currently employs 260 people and it produces more than $1 million worth of gold and silver per week.  The company says that $10 million is spent annually on wages and 80% of the total revenue stays in New Zealand.  It is estimated that it will take about 10 years to close the mine and do restoration work to the area.  The company currently operating the mine has received permission to do some shaft mining so who knows what the future may hold.  I haven’t looked at it but there is a web site at www.marthamine.co.nz.

 

After leaving Waipi we traveleddown the coast to Tauanga and from there headed over in the direction of Rotorua.  The area between Waipi and Tauanga is a large producer of kiwifruit.  We saw many orchards of kiwis along the highway and stopped to take a few pictures.  Most fields are small of just a few acres and made us curious as to how large most farms are.  We did see quite a few packing houses and cold storage facilities along the way.

 

In Rotorua we stopped in town and picked up some fried chicken and then took it to the city park and ate it there.  The pool has many bubbling pools of water and mud where eruptions have occurred and a lot of steam with hydrogen sulfide puffing up here and there.

 

We left Rotorua and drove the rest of the way to Lake Taupo and found the Top 10 Campground there.  It has the most beautiful facilities of any that we have had anywhere.  The bathrooms are very nice and have heated floors.  This represents the only heated bathrooms that we have encountered in New Zealand so far.  They also have a hot tub but we decided to save that for tomorrow.  It was getting pretty cold after the sun went down and didn’t feel like we wanted the cold wet trip back to the campervan after being in the pool.