Junction Stream

Today we walked 14 km. A good workout.

The Karangahake Gorge is the beautiful location for a busy gold mining site in the 1870s. More than half of the country's entire gold production came from around here and now all that is left are the remains of stamper batteries that crushed the rock to extract the ore. The gold that was found in this gorge was very hard to get it.

Extracting the gold was no simple matter of scooping up a few shovelfuls of sand and gravel and swirling it about in a pan. The miners, using basic tools, had to undo what the awesome forces of nature had taken aeons to do by breaking the rock, extracting the quartz and then crushing it to get at the gold.

The gold-bearing quartz in the hills through which the river cuts its way had to be blasted and chipped out using pick and shovel. It was then conveyed to stamping batteries which, as their name suggests, were great steam-powered hammers designed to pulverise rock to dust.

The remains of three of these can be seen in the Karangahake Gorge. Access to them is by a 4.5-km walkway, which follows the same route as the railway that once ran from Paeroa to the Waihī goldmine.

At Karangahake, there are several walks and tracks ranging anywhere from 30 minutes to over 2 hours starting at the Karangahake Reserve car park and picnic area. It was a hot, yet overcast day, so it was a perfect day to walk.

We have found that any signage giving information in NZ has been very sparse and often confusing, and this was definitely the case in the Gorge. We would follow arrows and directions regarding several walks and we never knew where we were going! Always a surprise.

One of the most spectacular walks in the area is called the "Windows Walk", a loop walk that leads through the old gold mining tunnels of the Talisman Mine. In areas, windows had been cut through the rock to allow a little light into the tunnels. The views of the gorge from these windows were great. We walked for about 1/2 hour in the long, dark tunnels and even saw glow worms at one point. We had our flashlight and our cell phone with us and they were necessary. Often the tunnel floors were wet and slippery, and at times, the ceiling was pretty low. Chris bumped his head in one spot.

When we exited, another trail followed the river and 1/2 hour later we ended at a waterfall and swimming hole with holidayers having picnics and swimming. Once again, we saw and took a long tunnel that took us to a camp ground. Now, that was as far as we were going to go and we wanted to be back to the parking lot by 5 p.m. So we turned around and walked briskly back to the exit of the first set of tunnels.

There we were able to cross the Waitawheta River over a suspension bridge, and take the old Crown Tramway Track back along the cliffs of the Waitawheta Gorge. The path follows the route of a bush tramway and passes by more "windows" in the cliff face at the end of mining tunnels. These were used to tip tailings down into the Waitawheta Gorge. Two of the mining tunnels, which are about 2 metres (7 ft) tall and wide, are safe to enter. They home to glowworms and ugly cave weta (crickets?)

Touring the School of Mining before our walk was a good idea as it gave us a good base of information for our hike. We would have loved to have seen and heard those miners in action. Being a miner here was not an easy job.

After all of our walking, we drove back to Thames, ate a light dinner, took a hot shower and slept like babies!Read more