TRIP REPORT: REEFTON GOLD TOUR, Day 1
Date: 21/03/2009
Trip leader: Dave Haycock
Trip report & photos: Graeme & Kay
 
When Mountain Man (Dave Haycock) decided to organize a trip to Reefton this year, little did he realise that it was quite a significant occasion for us, as it was exactly one year to the day since we had met in Reefton at the Southern Zone Jamboree, so we were very quick to put our names down as starters for the trip.

Friday night we drove down and spent the night in the Old Nurses Home, which has been refurbished and is now a backpackers accomodation. Great place to stay for a cheap night’s accommodation.
Saturday dawned quite foggy (surprise, surprise) but looked like it would be a nice day, so had a relaxing breakfast and then went to town to await the arrival of the rest of the club members. After the usual dos and don’ts from Mountain Man, we did the big drive of about a kilometer to the Bearded Miners establishment where we left our vehicles and lined up to board a tour bus which was to take us on a tour of the Globe Gold mine.

First stop was to be the museum at Blacks Point, and on the way Graham (one of our tour guides), pointed out interesting historical places. At the museum we had a guided tour and were shown how a working stamping machine worked to crush the raw material and extract the gold.

Next it was up the hill to the actual mine, where we sat on the verandah of the office block and had morning tea supplied by the tour operators. We were then split into two groups for our grand tour. Our group went to a look out at the face of the open cast mine where we had a bird’s-eye view of the mining operation. We could see where the digger was loading the huge trucks, with the drivers informed of whether their load was rubbish or gold bearing. The gold bearing loads were graded and dumped into what was described as ‘fingers’ depending on the grade of gold they were thought to contain. The waste was carted to another area where a new mountain was being formed! Basically the whole mining operation removes one hill and forms another. We just couldn’t imagine what the truck drivers think all day, just driving a short distance up and down the hill for 12 hours. BORING!!! Guess they are well paid?

Once we had had a good description of how everything worked we swapped places with the other group, and were guided through the more intricate details of extracting the gold. The end product was just a black sludge that certainly wouldn’t grace the ring finger of any lady that we know!! Not an easy product to smuggle out in your pocket!! This end product is then railed to Palmerston, then trucked to the Central Otago mine at Macraes, for final processing.

Back to the bus and down the hill to have billy tea and girdle scones with the Bearded Miners in Reefton. Very nice it was too, the billy tea nice and smokey and demanding of a second cup.
Once everybody was well sustained, Mountain Man rounded everybody up and we headed for Waiuta. We stopped at a number of little mining areas on the way, amazed that where there was a population of 800 people, there were 8 pubs!!! We had a really good look around all the historic areas, and ended the day with a walk down to the Snowy river mine. Mountain Man reassured us that it was a easy walk....... almost vertical going down (got us worried about climbing back out), but the track then meandered around the hill side at a gentle but steady incline, and not too difficult at all.

We then settled into the DOC Lodge at Waiuta, chosing our bunk spaces carefully to avoid the snorers. (It amazed me the Mountain Man invited his friends along, set up his own sleeping space in the only separate sleeping area, and denies us all sleep because HIS mate snores extremely loudly ALL NIGHT). Anyway we enjoyed the ambience of the evening out on the deck, before the cool wind and the thieving wekas drove us all inside, for silly and sometimes naughty stories, crazy games resulting in sore hips and thigh muscles (you had to be there to understand), and a $20 note in the teeth of one particular lady!!

Altogether a great day..... thanks Mountain Man!

TRIP REPORT: REEFTON GOLD TOUR, Day 2
Date: 22/03/2009
Trip leader: Dave Haycock
Trip report: Cushla Hogarth
 
7 a.m.: We were woken by the same noisy bugger who kept us awake most of the night due to his snoring, yelling, coughing and wandering around the bunk room trying to find the door for a nature call!
It was a beautiful clear morning with the sun beaming in onto the verandah of the lodge on the old hospital site.

Jill, Bob, Bevin, Ron and his grandson decided to walk to Big River via the Pack Track so were dropped off at the start. The rest of use drove six of the seven vehicles to Big River stopping at various old mine sites along the way. We arrived at Big River only to be met by the walkers!
We drove up to the winching and boiler shed, built in 2000. Materials for the new building were brought in by truck covered 6000 kilometers, wore out 1 ½ sets of tyres, had 17 punctures and lost 7 wing mirrors.

We walked up to the poppet head then some of us carried on to the old sawmill site which supplied timber for the tunnel supports.

Both Waiuta and Big River are well worth a visit.
Over the weekend we had good weather and company.

Thanks for the trip Dave.