Francis (Central Otago) Traditional Cache
fuzzynz: The turbine has been removed to make way for the new bridge so Archiving.
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A piece of history that most locals would drive past often and not even know is there.
The old turbine situated on this site was originally used to drive a flour mill (and later the water supply to the local hospital) and is an early version of the Francis Turbine. It was decommissioned in 1926 upon completion of the Kawarau Falls Dam.
In the late 1800's gold was the main draw card to the famed Kawarau & Shotover Rivers so of course there were many ideas proposed to get the most out of them. The principle idea associated with the Kawarau Dam was that the bed of the Kawarau River could be seen as a kind of ideal ripple box with gold trapped in fissures in the bed rock as well as that which was retained in the silt and gravel on the river bed. The idea was to dewater parts of the river and to work the true bottom by means other than that of conventional bucket dredges.
Bizarre solutions for dewatering, or getting around the problem of the water, were thought of. One, in 1873, nearly caused the death of several men when a "submarine" was built and tested in Otago Harbour. The submarine was intended to be sunk to the bottom of the Kawarau River when a trapdoor could be opened and the gold collected from the river bed: When the submarine failed to surface in one of its Otago Harbour trials it had to be hauled across mud flats to rescue the crew. Sections of the submarine are to be seen today at the Middlemarch Museum. The following years saw the Kawarau worked by bucket dredges but it was felt that dredging was, in effect, merely scraping the surface.
The announcement in 1923 of a proposal to erect a huge concrete dam across the outflow of Lake Wakatipu was therefore hailed by the media at the time as the ultimate solution. The Kawarau Falls Gold Mining Company was formed to undertake the building of the Dam which was supposedly going to help control the water flow which would expose the bed of the Kawarau River for mining - a seemingly impossible task which in the end proved to be a failure and the company was wound up soon after.
Parking is available on Bridge Street or on the South side of the bridge - Please do not park on the main road on the Frankton side, especially going South.
You are looking for a camo'd micro. BYO pen.
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(Decrypt)
Zntargvp
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