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Mining in New Zealand

Follow the history of gold coal and ironsand mining, and finding pounamu, Examine the conservation and environmental issues around mining. Also covered are types of mining, technology, mining dangers wealth, benefits, and disasters. SCIS no. 1865227

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Otago gold fields

Otago gold fields

Map of the Otago goldfields in 1865.

Opposing mining

Opposing mining

Kirstie Knowles of Forest and Bird posts her submission against a government proposal to mine national parks.

Copper mining on Kawau Island.

Mining in Northland

Mining in Northland

Dean Baigent Mercer talks about some of the mining exploration projects that are underway in the Far North.

Hydraulic mining

Hydraulic mining

This diagram shows the use of water in hydraulic mining.

Auckland’s largest quarry is on Mt Wellington.

Gold nuggets and flakes

Gold nuggets and flakes

New Zealand has been a significant source of gold since the 1860s.

Each capable of carrying 200 tonnes of ore-bearing rock, these massive trucks are lined up at Mcrae’s goldmine in Otago. Primary sector industries such as mining often have very high costs for phys...

Coal mining near Huntly in the 1950s.

Rogers coal mine

Rogers coal mine

The entrance to the Rogers coal mine.

Otago miner's song

An Otago miner's song from the 1860s.

This short 1979 National Film Unit documentary visits Rūnanga, to profile the men at work at five private coal mines.

Hunter’s gold

This classic kids’ adventure series follows a boy trying to find his missing father, amidst the 1860s Otago gold rush.

Community protest

Community protest

Community members are protesting renewed mining efforts in the Karangahake Gorge.

Locals upset at seabed mining proposal

Locals upset at seabed mining proposal

South Taranaki locals are upset consent has been granted to mine ironsands off the coast.

Mining ironsands at Taharoa

Mining ironsands at Taharoa

South of Kāwhia Harbour at Taharoa, in the Waikato, ironsands occur as dunes and beach sands.

Denniston incline

Denniston incline

The bleak Denniston plateau on the West Coast was the country's most productive coalfield.

Newspaper report from 1909 on a gold and ironsand mining venture at Okarito.

Unauthorised greenstone mining

Unauthorised greenstone mining

Detective Senior Sergeant Steve Wood rests his hand on pounamu seized by Wanaka police during an investigation. Three truckloads of illegally mined stone were confiscated. It was believed to have a...

The gold mines of Wellington

Gold field at Gabriel’s Gully

Gold field at Gabriel’s Gully

Gold field at Gabriel's Gully, Clutha district at the height of the gold rush in 1862.

Chinese gold miners

Chinese gold miners

Chinese gold miners at Orepuki

Waihi gold mine

Waihi gold mine

Sluicing for gold at Kumara

Sluicing for gold at Kumara

Quantity: 1 b&w copy negative(s). Physical Description: Film negative

Off to the goldfields

Off to the goldfields

A gold miner with his pack, pick, shovel and his billy.

Grahamstown goldfield

Grahamstown goldfield

A circular view of the gold field with factories with smoking chimneys, derricks, mining equipment and houses, looking out to sea from the hills behind the township Quantity: 1 colour art print(s)...

Mining company strikes gold near Paeroa

A mining company has found outstanding quality gold near Paeroa.

Coal mining in New Zealand

Coal mining in New Zealand

Aspects of coal mining.

- Pike River mine disaster

On the afternoon of 19 November 2010, an explosion ripped through the remote Pike River mine on the West Coast of the South Island, killing 29 men.

Digging and drilling in New Zealand

Do drilling and digging have a future, or are NZ’s mining days over?

Trans-Tasman iron ore animation

Mining events in New Zealand history.

Gold in them hills

A history of gold mining in Wellington.

Our extraction industry

Our petroleum and minerals industry.

Northland mining

Mining in Northland, New Zealand.

How government agencies manage offshore seabed mining activities in New Zealand.

Our kiwi submarine

Mining gold in New Zealand with a submarine.

Mining salt at Lake Grassmere.

Mining statistics

Mining statistics for New Zealand.

The revival of the coal industry has spurred fresh debate.

Mining Pounamu/greenstone.

Fast facts about swamp kauri.

Down in the Brunner mine

Brunner was the site of New Zealand's worst mining disaster.

A history of ironsands

The well-known West coast black sand beaches are New Zealand's greatest known reserves of ironsand.

Central Otago Gold-mining village

Central Otago Gold-mining village

In their quest for gold, miners often lived in remote, inhospitable places. Many worked hard for little return and only a few struck pay dirt. One success story involved two central Otago Māori min...

Gold miners in a mine

Gold miners in a mine

There are two distinctive forms of gold mining in New Zealand: extracting gold from alluvial gravels using pans, dredges, and sluice boxes or mining gold-bearing quartz bedrock through open-cast or...

This view, looking at the gold mining settlement of Dillman town on the West Coast (South Island) reveals houses, shops and flumes. The West Coast experienced a dramatic gold rush with towns like D...

Caledonian gold mine

Caledonian gold mine

This mine extracted gold from a quartz reef first discovered by William Hunt in 1867 in a Kuranui Stream waterfall. This mine and others in the area (combined with local Kauri logging) were so prod...

In this photograph of gold mining at Ross, you can see an example of fluming – wooden boxing designed to carry water to assist recovering gold from gravel deposits. It was in Ross that New Zealand’...

Martha mine, Waihi

Martha mine, Waihi

The Martha mine almost didn’t go ahead. At the time Māori protested against the mine as it was on sacred (wahi tapu) ground where ancestors were buried. They even sealed two miners John McCombie an...

Panning for gold

Panning for gold

Alluvial gold mining was hard, physical outdoor work and miners clothing and appearance reflected this. Thick moleskin trousers or breeches were worn for warmth and protection, while broad-brimmed ...

Between 1861 and 1863, thousands of fortune-seekers from Australia poured through South Island ports, (especially Dunedin’s Port Chalmers) on their way to the Otago goldfields. It was a particularl...

Part boat, part excavator, New Zealand was the first place in the world where gold dredges were developed and used like this example here, the Golden Bay Dredge. The first steam-powered dredges wor...

Certificate of miner's right to mine Tuapeka goldfield

Certificate of miner's right to mine Tuapeka goldfield

The Australian Gabriel Read first discovered gold in the Tuapeka area in 1861. He described the gold he found as being, “like the stars in Orion on a dark frosty night". Read also wrote in a letter...

Sluicing for gold

Sluicing for gold

Sluicing for gold was a later development on the New Zealand goldfields as the more accessible alluvial gold became scarcer. Sluicing involved washing away terraces or hillsides of gravel to obtain...

Gold mining near Kopu

Gold mining near Kopu

Charles Ring first discovered gold in the Coromandel in 1851. This painting shows a tunnel entrance to a gold mine with three miners outside, one carrying a shovel. Coromandel gold came not from ri...

George Fairweather Moonlight

George Fairweather Moonlight

Tall and exceptionally strong, the Scottish born Moonlight was a famous Otago and West Coast gold prospector who discovered a number of important goldfields. Two of them were Moke Creek (1861) and ...

Two men panning for gold

Two men panning for gold

One of the easiest and cheapest ways to discover gold is to pan for it, as this staged picture of two gold miners shows. Gold panning involves scooping gravel or sand into a pan, then swirling and ...

This is the last Central Otago gold escort, changing horses at Roxburgh. Escorts carried gold (via a stagecoach) from goldfields to (in this case) Dunedin where the gold was subsequently weighed, r...

Gold tailings at Kaniere

Gold tailings at Kaniere

Stacked like Pringles chips this curious landform is the result of a gold dredge. These are tailings – mounds of gravel that have had gold extracted from them by the Kaniere Gold dredge (built in 1...

Gold rush (New Zealand)

Gold rush (New Zealand)

The New Zealand gold rush began with a discovery of gold in the Coromandel area in 1852. As more gold was discovered, people came to New Zealand from all over the world looking to strike it rich. T...

Blackwater Gold Mine, Waiuta

Blackwater Gold Mine, Waiuta

Showing an elevated view of buildings at the Blackwater Mine, Waiuta

The mining process

The mining process in Waihi, from beginning to end.

The value of gold - why this metal outshines the rest

Explores the eventful history of Northland’s unique asset, swamp kauri.

Swamp kauri plunder: a tale of misadventure

Explores the eventful history of Northland’s unique asset, swamp kauri.

Coal mining disasters, issues and general facts about the industry in NZ.

GNS Science explores the Earth’s crust for fossil fuels - for oil, gas and coal.

What are minerals?

Includes a simple introduction to ores – mineral-rich rocks. Related content included.

Waikato North Head mine site

Up to 1.2 million tonnes of sand is mined each year at the Waikato North Head mine. This article explains the process.

Mining activities

A range of different mining techniques has been developed to obtain NZ’s valuable resources.

Impacts of mining

Extraction of minerals can cause large changes to the land, rivers, and oceans.

Pounamu stones move like fish swimming upstream - new research

GNS Science says the research on Pounamu in conjunction with Ngai Tahu, will help locate and protect the precious resource.

Environment Guide: land use

Overview and more detailed information about petroleum production, and mineral extraction in New Zealand. Includes methods, effects on land, and case studies.

These pages from Many Answers will guide you to reviewed websites and databases on the Pike River Mining Disaster.

Mining e-waste for gold

Simon Morton visits Mint Innovation, an Auckland company using bacteria to mine precious metals from your old electronic junk.

Cook Islands to allow seabed mining licenses

The Cook Islands government plans to license seabed mining operators to prospect its exclusive economic zone for manganese and cobalt nodules within the coming financial year.

Mineral resources

Mineral resources cover a wide range of economically useful materials.

These pages from Many Answers will guide you to reviewed websites and databases on gold mining.

Cook Islands to allow seabed mining licenses

The Cook Islands government plans to license seabed mining operators to prospect its exclusive economic zone for manganese and cobalt nodules within the coming financial year.

Following gold Year 5 : L3 May : 2015

This poem is written from the point of view of a Chinese miner, during the 1860's, describing his pursuit of gold in the rivers of New Zealand, far from his homeland.

Managing the future of seabed mineral exploitation.

Mineral resources

Mineral resources cover a wide range of economically useful materials.

Fertiliser industry says phosphate vital

The importation of mined phosphate sourced from the Western Sahara into New Zealand, is causing controversy.

The gold fields of New Zealand.

An account of New Zealand’s goldfield in 1873

Dredging for gold in New Zealand today.

A new gold rush hits New Zealand

Hunting illegal miners as a new gold rush hits New Zealand..

Protest against mining, because of its likely damage to the natural environment, has been a theme of Coromandel life since the late 1960s, when efforts at commercial mining resumed. These protester...

Poster produced by the New Zealand coal industry to promote the benefits of coal an energy resource. Illustration of a tree with branches that depict the various uses of coal such as fuel, consumab...

There's hills in that thar gold..

There's hills in that thar gold..

Poster. Colour photograph of a Coromandel mine. Text "There's hills in that thar gold.. act now to save the Coromandel Peninsula ...".

Find more information about mining in New Zealand on EPIC. Databases recommended: Gale Academic OneFile, Australia New Zealand Reference Centre Plus (EBSCO), Britannica School). School login may be...

The future of sand mining in NZ

Sand is the natural resource we consume most of worldwide, after air and water, and it's starting to run out.

EPIC contains a number of databases with useful information related to New Zealand mining like Australia New Zealand Reference Centre Plus. School login may be required.

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