Left: The Try Fluke mine and battery. Far
Left: miners push carts from shaft. Above Left:
Quartz ore was tracked down to the stamping
batteries for pulverizing.
THE STAMPING BATTERIES
Meanwhile back in the valleys (the Mid and
Upper Townships), each mine constructed
buildings to hold the steam engine powered
‘batteries,’ mechanical stamping machines
that pulverized the quartz ore into fine powder.
By 1892, this powder was treated in large vats
using the chemical cyanide. The resulting liquid
slurry was then processed to isolate only the
gold which settled to the bottom of the slag.
This dust was then melted into ingots.
The Try Fluke mine was the first to build its
batteries in 1890; it had ten stampers operating
at once. Other mines quickly followed with their
own facilities, and heavy pounding filled the
valleys nonstop, day and night.
Writes Simpson, “The thunder of the heavy
stamps, each of about 8 hundred weight,
Miners from the main lower level shaft of the
Try Fluke and Kapai-Vermont mine. Front
row from left: Sam Stevens, William Edgar,
R. Port, Dick Hardman. Second row: W.
McLaughlan, Bob Fraser, J. Jones, Tom Foster,
Jack Ferguson, H. Kerr, Tom Cahill, George
Horn. On top: Stewart Taggart, Duncan
McTavish, Bill Robinson, Bill Sewell, Donald
McDonald, George Wallace, Charlie Horn.
18
COROMANDEL LIFE LATE AUTUMN/WINTER
Above: Kuaotunu Lower Township seen from south. Thompson Store (facing us on right) sits next
to the bakery, barely visible behind hillside.
Right: Another view of Lower Township. Tailor shop (lower left of photo) was later rescued and
is now a studio in Whenuakite (ee page 51). It sits across from Thompson Store with bakery in
foreground and beyond is two story Kuaotunu Hotel. The road going east is Irishtown Road which
led to the residential district.
- Photographs by Alexander McKay
The Mountain King battery with series of large
cyanide laced settling tanks to treat the gold
laden slurry of crushed quartz ore. Cyanide
replaced mercury for this purpose.
