The Tuia Mātauranga Pōkai Whenua GeoTour follows the footsteps of early explorers of Aotearoa New Zealand taking you to places where leaders of the past searched for food, resources and ways to adapt and survive in this new land. Use the Pōkai Whenua GeoTour as your classroom to explore the stories of the past, in the present, to preserve what is unique in Aotearoa New Zealand for the future. Collect the codewords to get the Geocoin puzzle piece. To be able to complete this GeoTour and receive your special Geocoin collectable, remember to take a note of the codeword placed in the cache. This will need to be recorded in your passport which can be downloaded here.

These days the Waiorongomai valley is covered in beautiful native forest and is criss-crossed by many historic tracks that take you past the remains of gold mines, miner’s lodgings, old machinery and the Piako County Tramway, New Zealand’s oldest bush tramway with the original rail still in place. Starting in the 1850s, however, after gold was discovered in the Coromandel Ranges, the gold rush that was created lead to a surge in prospectors moving into the area.

The Coromandel and Kaimai Ranges are a string of large andesite volcanoes that began erupting about 20 million years ago. Following these eruptions, geothermal activity deposited minerals in cracks and fissures in the rocks. The dissolved silica crystallised to form a quartz reef, in which gold and silver and many other metals may be found. Hard rock gold is chemically bound alongside the quartz deposits in the rock and therefore must be heavily processed to release the valuable metals.

In 1881 a prospector named Hone Wharehiko managed to find a gold bearing quartz reef on the slopes of Mount Te Aroha that attracted so many prospectors, the valley became the scene of large-scale gold mining activities and the town of Waiorongomai sprang up soon after. The reef at Waiorongomai, which was named ‘Buck Reef’ was found to be about 5.5km long and 600m deep – one of the largest reefs of its type in the world.

The initial assessment of the reef was so promising that a large amount of capital was spent to access the very steep area where most of the quartz was found. At first horses were used to transport materials along ‘pack’ tracks that were cut at several levels through the valley. The miners used pickaxes, explosives and water powered drills to extract the rock and often camped in the valley instead of making the trip from Waiorongomai township each day. The main encampment was called Quartzville which was setup in 1882 and located near the end of the high-level pack track.

The 5km long Piako County Tramline was built soon after to haul ore carts from the top of the valley to the crushing battery at the bottom. This was a large undertaking requiring 3 inclines (Fern Spur, Butler’s and May Queen) to be built in the steep sections with winching equipment to control the cars going up and down. Several tunnels had to be cut and tracks needed to be laid along the entire distance. It cost £18,000 to build this line, a considerable amount in the day and was opened in 1883.

Each truck was labelled so battery workers knew from which mine the ore came. Loaded trucks were taken to the top of the inclines using horses to pull them along the flatter sections of the track. A man rode on the rear of the trucks going down the inclines with one foot upon the brake-lever to regulate the speed, but runaway trucks were often a problem especially on Butler’s Incline where they broke away and travelled along the line at a considerable speed for quite a distance. The inclines worked by means of two wires revolving on drums that made it possible for a loaded truck to raise the steel rope and an empty truck from the bottom when the loaded one went down.

The first battery, which was built so the gold could be extracted from the quartz, was set up by Firth and Clarke in 1882 (in the site that is now the parking area at the posted coordinates). The battery separated out the gold using several different processes. First, heavy piston-shaped rods (called stampers) rose and fell on to the quartz and crushed it. From there it was transferred to berdans, which work like a large mortar and pestle to crush it further into a fine powder. The gold was separated from the crushed ore by mixing it with mercury, which attracted the gold. Next the mercury was removed by heat, leaving the gold behind. The battery was powered by water which was channelled in special ditches called water races into turbines, a total of 6.5km of water races were built to power the turbines of the batteries in the valley.

Despite the early promise of much gold from the large quartz reef, the Waiorongomai was never able to live up to the miner’s expectations. The rock was particularly hard, making mining and crushing difficult, and the gold itself was finely divided with other base metals like zinc, copper and lead so only a small percentage could be extracted. Despite the heavy investment in the infrastructure to optimise extraction, a total 68,961 ounces (less than 2000 kg) of bullion (silver and gold) were extracted from Waiorongomai. The last prospector was Malcom Hardy who mined the area up until 1946 - the remains of his hut can still be seen further up the track.

As for Waiorongomai township, by 1884 there were over 1000 residents, three hotels and nearly a dozen shops. The town only thrived for a few years while the gold rush was at its peak, but it suffered from water and sanitation issues and once most of the mining activity was abandoned in the 1890s the town melted away, along with the hopes of its inhabitants. In the 1920s the buildings were removed or sold for scrap.

This rhyme, written by C. W. Richmond on 10 June 1890, best describes the desperation many disappointed miners must have felt when they finally gave up their quest for gold and left the valley.

To find this cache you need to answer the following questions:

At waypoint 1 (‘Welcome to Waiorongomai Valley’ information sign - S 37° 33.617 E 175° 45.297) find the following for the South coordinates:
A = How many women are shown around the township at the bottom on the sign? (do not include photos)
B = How many horses are shown? (do not include photos) Minus 9 from this number
C = How many buildings have dates on the side of them?

At waypoint 2 (‘Fern Spur Incline’ information sign - S 37° 33.585 E 175° 45.270) find the following for the East coordinates:
D = How many rails where used up the incline (do not count the extra one where it split to let the cars pass each other)?
E = 'As early as 188_ the tramway was down to operating two days a week' - what is the last number of the year?
F = What was the time the last ‘Gallagher’s Bus’ left Waiorongomai to go back to Te Aroha?

The cache can be found at: S 37° 33.ABC E 175° 45.DEF

Please use the geochecker above to ensure you have the correct coordinates, it has an accurate hint to the cache placement as GPS can be very jumpy in this area.
Note: Cell coverage is good at posted coordinates but is unreliable in the area of the cache.

References:
• https://www.doc.govt.nz/globalassets/documents/getting-involved/students-and-teachers/field-trips-by-region/bop/waiorongomai-education-resource.pdf
• https://www.tearohanz.co.nz/see-do/history-of-te-aroha/gold-fever-in-the-waiorongomai
• https://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/handle/10289/10450