Historic Kawau Island
Kawau Island in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf was the site of
one of New Zealand’s earliest mining ventures. Later it
became the island home of Sir George Grey, one of New
Zealand’s most influential and controversial political
figures.
Kawau Island Historic Reserve was created to protect Mansion House,
Sir George Grey’s former home, and the gardens and landscape
he created, together with sites and relics from the historic copper
industry. The reserve is a popular destination for visitors
arriving by ferry or pleasure craft.
Today about 10 percent of the island is protected as publicly owned
reserves managed by the Department of Conservation. The remainder
of the island is privately owned with a small resident
population.
History of Kawau
Kawau is associated with the early ancestor Toi te huatahi from
whom comes the island’s traditional name ‘Te Kawau
tumaro o Toi’. The island is reputed to have been settled by
descendants of Toi and later by descendants of the crews of the
Arawa and Tainui canoes.
For three centuries the island was occupied by the people known as
Ngati Tai who were later defeated by the Te Kawerau iwi,
specifically Ngati Manuhiri.
During the 18th century there was continuing conflict between the
resident Kawerau and the Marutuahu confederation of tribes from the
Hauraki area over access to the shark fishing grounds.
Kawau was later abandoned after the musket war raids in the 1820s
by Ngapuhi, and remained unoccupied until the 1830s. In this period
the Ngati Manuhiri hapu of Te Kawerau and Ngatiwai returned to the
island and the adjoining coastline where they remain to this
day.
After protracted debate over ownership Kawau was sold in the 1840s
to W.T. Fairburn of the North British Australasian Loan and
Investment Company.
Historic copper industry
The Tryphena sailed from Auckland on 14 April 1844 with the
letter and passengers, a Mrs Wright and two children, and Messrs
Joseph, Bradbury, and Keen on board, and a cargo of manganese ore.
She arrived in Sydney on 5 May 1844.
The Kawau Company, formed by Mr Beattie, instructed another of
their agents Mr John Taylor to engage a professional copper miner
in Sydney. Taylor came to Auckland with instructions to employ
miners and open the Kawau mine. He inspected the workings in
November 1844, shortly after the mine had opened and then returned
to Sydney, reporting to Mr Beattie that the copper prospects were
good. His advice was passed on to the investment company back in
Scotland where it was well received, and capital was increased to
50,000 pounds. A mining Captain (Ninnis), carpenter, and miners
from Cornwall were engaged, and these men sailed from Falmouth in
June 1845.
The start of mining
The Kawau company built a village for the miners and their
families in the bay they called Garlick Bay (later Mansion House
Bay), spending about 23,000 pounds. Included was a house for the
mine manager (Ninnis) and a street with houses on either side for
the workers and their families, and a jetty. Some of the families
built houses at other nearby locations. By 1848 there were about
220 people on the island.
A traditional Cornish Pumphouse was erected to house a 50
horsepower steam engine, driving a Cornish mine pump, after a
smaller engine was found insufficient for dewatering as the
workings extended.
The copper lode ran roughly north-south, outcropping on a steep
spur on the coast where the main mine adit and Cornish Pumphouse
was located. Some land was reclaimed at the end of the spur to
provide a platform area for working and for stockpiling ore prior
to shipment from a jetty at the mine location.
Although the lode could not be described as an extensive mineral
deposit it was a rich sulphide orebody. However, an inappropriate
grant of land (below high water mark) adjacent to the Kawau
Company's workings to Lawyer Mr Frederick Whittaker and Mr
Theophilus Heale of Auckland caused considerable trouble. These
persons proceeded to also mine the same copper lode, using the
Kawau Company's reclaimed land to enable their operations to be
conducted. Briefly, the Grant was in exchange for a land allotment
(No 16) in Auckland Town, wanted by the Surveyor General to
commence a defence plan on Albert Hill. The landward boundary was
defined as high water mark, so the Grant included the Kawau
Company's reclaimed land.
The reclaimed land at Kawau was essential to the Kawau Company's
operations and without doubt they also intended mining the part of
the copper lode now possessed by Whitaker and Heal as a result of
the Grant. Protracted litigation and communications went all the
way to Mr Gladstone in London as the Kawau Company desperately
tried to get a just resolution while Whittaker and Heale continued
mining. Up to 17 November 1846, according to customs returns,
Whitaker and Heale had already exported 469 tons of copper ore
valued at 7,840 pounds.
However there was a turn for the better when the new Governor
George Grey arrived at the end of November 1845 for his first term
in New Zealand. The Kawau Company petitioned him upon the subject
and at the same time also petitioned Mr Gladstone on the injustices
they had sustained through their agent in London. Mr Gladstone
forwarded a copy of the Kawau Company?s complaint to Governor Grey
and indicated the view that if the statements were true the Kawau
Company had every reason to complain.
Governor Grey agreed and after taking advice from the
Attorney-General, an application was made to the Supreme Court
successfully repealing the Grant to Whitaker and Heale. The Court
(Lord Grey) recommended that the land between high and low water be
included in the grant to the Kawau Company and that was done,
defining the title boundary of Kawau Island as mean low water
mark.
Whittaker and Heale not only mined copper ore from below high
water mark but tunnelled toward the Kawau Company's landward
workings on the same lode, and because their shaft was to seaward
and only protected from the sea by a timber collar at the surface
the Kawau Company's mine was already exposed to risk of flooding.
John Taylor directed his miners to dig toward the sea, in the
direction of the rival mine to confirm his suspicions and they
reached the workings of Whittaker and Heal on the Kawau Company
land, about 12 feet to landward of high water mark. Captain Ninnis,
the Kawau Company's mining engineer knocked down the partition of
ore between the two mines and caught Whittaker and Heale?s men in
the act. The connecting of the two mine workings directly to the
sea through Whittaker's Shaft led to flooding of both mines several
years later when the timber collar inevitably failed.
Mine working and ore smelting
The Kawau copper lode is contained in silicified greywacke and
dips downward at a high angle. Above ground water level the
sulphide is well weathered and oxidised to sulphate, the blue
copper sulphate being easily seen in the exposure on the spur.
Lower down in the lode there is a transition through an enriched
zone where copper from the weathered ore above has been transported
and re-deposited, and below that again is the relatively unaltered
primary ore of lower grade. Workings commenced in the enriched zone
which about at the top of the permanent ground water region, and
mine development then proceeded on three levels. As the mining
progressed toward the unaltered primary ore the Kawau Company found
in January 1847 that the sulphides underwent an exothermic reaction
aboard ship. The shipments of ore, released from the underground
pressure and exposed to the air heated and swelled dangerously on
the way to smelting works in Wales. As a result some Kawau ore
shipments were stockpiled in Australia and others disposed of at
sea to save the vessel.
To overcome the difficulties a decision to build a smelting works
was made in November 1848 with construction proceeding during 1849
in a bay on the north side of Bon Accord Harbour. Both the Cornish
pumphouse at the mine and the smelting works building were made
from sandstone blocks quarried at Matakana on the mainland.
A party of smelters was engaged in Swansea in Wales and sent out
to Sydney where they worked for six months at Port Jackson,
experimenting with Kawau ore stockpiled there before continuing on
to Kawau. At the Kawau works the sulphide ore was smelted and cast
into copper regulus blocks and the slag was also cast into blocks.
The casting was done in pits in the floor of the smelting house
building. The copper regulus blocks of about two cubic feet in
volume were then shipped overseas for further refining. Some of the
slag blocks were later used to construct pillars at the landward
end of the Mansion House Bay jetty in Bon Accord Harbour, and for
foreshore retaining structures. It is thought that others may have
been dispersed as ships ballast.
Operations at the smelting works produced quantities of sulphur
dioxide fumes as the sulphide ore was smelted and to avoid the
acrid fumes the Welsh workers and their families moved further down
the harbour to a place they nostalgically named Swansea Bay.
After the mine closed about 1855 Mr Alexander Harris continued
to stay on as caretaker and to run a store and post office. He was
there when Sir George Grey purchased Kawau in 1862 and his daughter
Elsie became housekeeper for Sir George Grey.
THIS EARTHCACHE
To claim a find on this earthcache you will need to perform the
tasks described below.
Failure to provide the required answers via the email link on my
profile page, or upload the required photo with your online log may
result in your log being removed.
(Do not put answers in as a log)
(1) - How big were the copper regulus blocks ........The
answer to this question must be emailed to the cache owner.
(2) - On the information board at GZ what is the 5 word
title...... The answer to this question must be emailed to the
cache owner.
(3) - When at GZ count how many window holes are still
intact, and measure the lower window opening dimensions (roughly is
ok)........The answer to this question must be emailed to the cache
owner.
(4) - From the published coordinates, or nearby please
take a photo of the main attraction showing your GPS unit. (please
make sure your GPS unit is visible in the photo) This photo should
be uploaded with your online log once permission is granted
There are regular ferries that leave from Sandspit and take
you to Mansion House.
It is approx a 30min walk to GZ.
Please take care with kids on walk and at GZ as water close
by