BY CAROL WRIGHT
with excerpts from
THIS IS KUAOTUNU
by R. A. “Alf ” Simpson
Many historic photographs
by Alexander McKay
Mercury, Red Mercury, Irene, Waiawa, Otama,
the Kapai-Vermont.
Early reports to the Department of Mining show
the quartz veins, called reefs, to be one to three
feet thick, with some at Try Fluke measuring an
impressive three-to-seven feet in thickness. In
the early period, the ore would be mined out
and stored, awaiting the building of batteries,
and later, the vile large vats of cyanide water.
Once they were operating, the ore was placed
in cars on tracks that led to the road for
transport to the crushing batteries. The Kapai-
Vermont battery had ore drying ovens to make
the ore easier to crush. (See story page 23.)
BY SHIP AND BY ROAD
Work began immediately to build and improve
roads. The Matarangi Road was built to serve
incoming supplies and equipment from steam
boats originating from Auckland. These ships
offloaded at Kuaotunu Beach to ‘surfboats’
which were then offloaded onto wagons pulled
by horses in chest deep water (see photo lower
right page 19). Some scows were able to land
directly on the beach.
Passengers and supplies (including numerous
kegs of ‘stagger juice’) were loaded and
brought ashore. Chaff and oats were shipped
in for the many horse teams needed by the
mining operations, and coal was imported to
fuel the mine’s steam driven batteries.
The Matarangi Road offered a path to the
mining areas, with the final distance covered
by horse track. A second road of five miles, the
Mercury Bay to Kuaotunu Road, was later built,
and this served also as a route for supplies and
new prospectors.
Roads between the areas were muddy messes
during rainy season, until finally stabilized with
gravel around 1892.
TWO TOWNSHIPS, well THREE
Within a year, Kuaotunu had the makings of
a real town, sporting two large hotels (the
Kuaotunu and The Royal), a public building,
post office, stores, and other buildings in the
flat Lower Township near the beach and two
fresh water creeks. A hotel and store were built
at the Upper Township as early as 1890, with
butcher shop, bakeries, boarding houses and
other facilities soon following. There was also
a Middle Township around the Red Mercury
Battery where Cemetery Hill, two churches, the
school, the Rifle Club range, a library, stores,
boarding house, and others were located.
Simpson quotes a miner who served later as
the proprietor of the Kuaotunu Hotel, Robert
Ritchie, about the Lower Township. It included
“four stores, several butcher shops, three
bakeries, one tailor, two drapers, and a drug
store. Everything that was to be required was
to be had at our door.”
Irish Town, a residential section east of the
Kuaotunu River outlet sprouted up in the Lower
Township, not far from the two hotels. The hill
along the northeast coast was called Black
Jack Hill, probably called after the dark zinc
related mineral often found in mining.
Who would guess it now, but in the 1890s, the sleepy Kuaotunu
Village was once a bustling gold mining area supporting three
townships. The Lower-Township seen here in foreground
sported two hotels, a billiard parlor, barber, general stores,
tailors, post office, dressmaker, drapery, bakery, butcher, stables,
school, chemist, fire brigade,
and even a race horse track around the dunes.
The mine areas in the cliffs above the valley supported a
cemetery, two churches, boarding houses, another hotel,
a School of Mines, band room, rifle club...and more.
then the veins gave out...
And it all but disappeared
