Thames and the Coromandel: New Zealand's Quartz Mining Frontier

When we think of the New Zealand gold rush, we usually picture men with pans and sluice boxes, working the gravels of Otago rivers. But on the Coromandel Peninsula, the story was different. Here, the gold wasn't sitting in streams waiting to be scooped up. It was locked inside veins of white quartz, deep underground.

Getting it out would require a different kind of mining — one that looked more like industrial warfare than frontier prospecting.

New Zealand's First Gold

Gold was actually discovered in New Zealand at Coromandel in 1852 — nine years before Gabriel Read's famous find in Otago. But the Coromandel gold was in hard rock, not alluvial gravels, and the technology to extract it economically didn't exist yet.

The area was declared a goldfield in 1862, but the real boom didn't start until 1867, when prospectors found payable gold in Kuranui Creek near Thames. Within months, Thames exploded into a town of 15,000 to 18,000 people — rivaling Auckland in size and far exceeding it in raw energy.

Geology: The Volcanic Engine

To understand why Coromandel mining was so difficult, you have to understand the geology. Unlike the Otago schist, which was eroded by glaciers to release its gold into riverbeds, the Coromandel Peninsula is an ancient volcanic arc.

The rugged volcanic landscape of the Coromandel, where gold is locked deep within quartz veins.

Millions of years ago, superheated water (hydrothermal fluid) rich in dissolved minerals surged up through cracks in the cooling volcanic rock. As this fluid neared the surface and cooled, the silica precipitated out as quartz veins, trapping gold and silver inside. This type of deposit is known as an Epithermal System.

The result was "bonanza" grade ore shoots — pockets of rock that were unbelievably rich in gold — separated by vast stretches of barren quartz. finding the reef was one thing; following the unpredictable gold shoots was another entirely.

The Age of Stamper Batteries

Unlike Otago, where a man could work alone with a pan, Coromandel gold required machinery. The quartz had to be dug from underground shafts, hauled to the surface, and crushed by massive stamper batteries — rows of heavy iron stamps that pounded the rock to powder.

The sound of the batteries was constant — a rhythmic thunder that echoed through the hills day and night. At the peak, there were over 100 batteries operating in the Thames-Coromandel region, each requiring fuel, water, and a steady supply of ore.

This was industrial mining. It required capital, organization, and labour on a scale that individual prospectors couldn't match. Companies formed, shares were traded, fortunes were made and lost in the offices of Auckland and London.

Historic mining operations required massive investment in infrastructure, water races, and machinery similar to this site on the West Coast.

The Cyanide Revolution

By the late 1880s, much of the easily crushed ore had been processed. Lower-grade material — once discarded as worthless — sat in massive tailings heaps around the processing sites.

Then came a breakthrough: the cyanide process, which used a weak cyanide solution to dissolve gold from ore. This technology, pioneered in the 1880s, made it economical to re-process old tailings and extract gold from rock that stamper batteries couldn't handle.

The cyanide process gave the Coromandel goldfields a second life — and made the Martha Mine at Waihi one of the most productive gold mines on Earth.

The Martha Mine

Gold was discovered on Martha Hill in 1878. By the 1890s, the Martha Mine had become New Zealand's richest gold mine, producing millions of ounces of gold and silver from its underground workings.

The numbers are staggering: between 1882 and 1952, the Martha Mine produced5.6 million ounces of gold and 38.4 million ounces of silver. The town of Waihi grew up around the mine, and by 1908 it was the fastest-growing town in the Auckland province.

The underground mine closed in 1952, but reopened as an open-pit operation in 1988. It's still producing today, operated by OceanaGold — one of the few active gold mines in New Zealand.

Fossicking on the Coromandel

Unlike Otago, there are no designated public fossicking areas on the Coromandel Peninsula. The gold is in hard rock, not alluvial gravels, and most of the historic mining areas are on private land or active mining tenements.

But the history is everywhere. You can visit the Thames School of Mines, explore the restored stamper batteries, or take a tour of the Waihi Martha Mine. The landscape still bears the scars and monuments of New Zealand's industrial gold mining era.