The history of Waiuta

The history of Waiuta

By Tyler Davey

Where it is and why

If you follow the Snowy Road on the West Coast you will arrive at an old ghost
town called Waiuta. A large gold vain was found in 1905 by Jimmy Martin at
the location where Waiuta was to be founded. The gold vain was named the
Birthday Reef because it was discovered on King Edwards the VII’s birthday.

How they got the gold out

By the 1930’s Waiuta had a population of around 600 people. The miners
drilled and blasted the gold and quartz out of the rock. The timber around
Waiuta provide the people with housing and helped stabilised the mines from
collapsing. Mercury, cyanide and other toxic chemicals were used to separate
the gold from the quartz ore. In 2017 EnviroWaste cleared the chemicals from
the Prohibition Shaft site at a cost of $3.6 million.

Places where the gold goes

There were two means of crashing the quartz to extract the gold.

1. The battery process. Gold was pounded out of the ore using a water
2. powered battery of iron stamps. This occurred at the Snowy Battery.
3. The ball mill. Iron balls in revolving steel drums crushing the quartz rock.
4. This occurred at the Prohibition Mill site.

Dates of what happened

On King Edward the VII birthday a reef of gold had been found. By the 1930s over 600 people had been staying at a gold mine called Waiuta. Between 1939 and 1946 the number of men employed by the company fell from 240 to 113 because of the first World War as there was no one to mine and make money. On July 9th 1951 the Blackwater Shaft collapsed, and the mine began to flood. Many people became jobless and were forced to leave Waiuta and settle somewhere else. Many of the buildings eventually got dismantled, and within a couple months, Waiuta became a ghost town, with nothing to offer.