We have a two part meeting.
One part is a presentation from Sarah Diggle of the Magnus
Academy giving feedback on the school’s sponsored (NSK and NES) visit to the
Big Bang Fair in 2014, which was followed up by a further visit to the 2015
event.
The
second part of the meeting is about the Martha gold mine, at Waihi in New
Zealand’s North Island, which is one of the most important gold and silver
mines in the world. It was discovered in 1878 and is still working. An
underground mine until 1952, the left-hand photograph is a present-day view of
the later, now worked-out, opencast pit. Today the gold and silver are reached
by spiral shafts sunk nearby.
To give an idea of the scale of working: by 1952, when the
deep mine closed, around 174 tonnes of gold and 1,200 tonnes of silver had been
produced from 12 million tonnes of quartz ore.
The right-hand photograph is of Karangahake gorge, originally
the only connection Martha had with the outside world.
We will see two films – the first is an overview of that
precarious transport link, from horse teams to modern trains, with some archive
film of steam and diesel locomotives traversing the gorge and its infamous rail
tunnel.
The second film is a 1949 film
(silent, with modern narration) of the old deep Martha mine, following the
extraction process from ore to bullion.
