Waihi--Heart of Gold of New Zealand

Waihi is a little town about two hours south of Auckland. It is in the Bay of Plenty region. Waihi was settled early in the 1850 and became a place of interest in 1886 when gold was discovered. Soon after it was found there were lots of miners who had staked a claim and had started to dig tunnels deep into the earth. Many miners did alright with their claims while others decided not to continue to mine but they became what were called tunnelmakers. They gave up their claims to gold and silver and began working for the railroad digging tunnels for the trains. There is a tunnel that is more than a kg long that they dug about 1910.

Side note here: These tunnerlmakers were the first Kiwis drafted into WWI. They were so good at what they did that they were sent to Germany and they dug tunnels to help defeat the Germans since they had tunnels all over the land.

Anyway, some of these mines joined forces and created the Martha Gold Company. They were a big business and had lots of men working for them. They used horses to help bring the gold and silver out of the mine. The horses would be taken down into the mine and they would life there, usually only coming out on Christmas and Easter. They had to blindfold them when they came out to protect their eyes.  They slowly became more modern in their production but they were still pretty primitive when these mines closed in the mid 1950s.

The mine opened again in the mid 1980s as Martha's Mine and it was then an open-pit mine. As they worked it they found many of the old tunnels that had been worked for years.  This is what it looks like now.

I could not even get a photo of the bottom of it since it is now so deep.

It is an active, working mine even today. And it has a huge economical impact of this part of New Zealand.

This is one of the dump trucks that works the mine. Tires are 7 feet tall and cost $9000 each.

When the mine has been worked out and there is no more gold and silver that they are bringing out then they will close down operations and it will be made into a man-made lake. If you look at the local maps it is labeled:  Martha's Mine/Lake.