Macraes Flat
| Macraes Flat | ||
| Geographical location | ||
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| Coordinates | 45 ° 23 ′ S , 170 ° 26 ′ E | |
| Region ISO | NZ-OTA | |
| Country |
 New Zealand
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| region | Otago | |
| District | Waitaki District | |
| Ward | Waihemo Ward | |
| Residents | few | |
| height | 500 m | |
| Post Code | 9483 | |
| Telephone code | +64 (0) 3 | |
| UN / LOCODE | NZ MFL | |
| Photography of the place | ||
 Stanley's Hotel - built in 1882 by stonemason John Budge . |
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Macraes Flat is a small settlement in the Waitaki District of the Otago regionon the South Island of New Zealand . The settlement has a history as a gold rush town and is associated with the name Macraes Gold Mine , which isNew Zealand'slargest gold mining area with two open-cast mines and an underground pit.
geography
The settlement, which today consists of only a few houses, is located at an altitude of 500 m , about 55 km north of Dunedin . In the north and west, the Taieri Ridge is within sight, while in the south a gentle mountain landscape up to 700 m high stretches across the distance. In the east it goes from Macraes Flat on the regional road Macraes Road down into the valley of the Shag River and there connects the settlement on the New Zealand State Highway 85 with Palmerston and further on the New Zealand State Highway 1 with Dunedin .
history
The history of Macraes Flat begins around 1847 with the first explorations by a European , the surveyor and planner of Dunedin , Charles Henry Kettle (1821-1862), commissioned by the New Zealand Company . Nothing is known from before the Europeanization of the area. After Kettle came the squatters (land occupiers) who tried to make their fortune by taking land in the "infinite" vastness of the country. The first legal owner of the so-called Run 109 , to which Macraes Flat would later belong, was the Swedish- born Charles Hopkinson , one of the early settlers of Otago , who first lived in the Māori settlement Ōtākou after his arrival in 1848 . But then it was the shepherd John Macrae , employed by Hopkinson , who built his hut in the vast pastureland and gave the settlement its name. More is known about him than the John Macrae came from Scotland and came from the MacRae family clan .
In 1862 the first gold was found in Macraes Flat , but it was only three years after the start of the gold rush in Otago (1861–1863) that gold prospectors invaded Macraes Flat in droves in 1864 . After rich gold discoveries, the population grew to over 500 in just one year. In 1866 a post office was opened and around 1882 the Stanley's Hotel, well-known in Otago . In 1889 the Golden Point Quartz Mining Company was founded, which was 5 km from Macraes Flat at the so-called Golden Point in underground mining for gold and quartz until 1917 . From 1898 to the 1940s, gold washed up and deposited in the area's rivers and small lakes was dredged. After that it became quiet in the settlement. With the techniques available up to that point in time, gold could no longer be extracted economically.
The renewed search for gold in the area around Macraes Flat , combined with the possibility of more profitable mining, began in 1982. After numerous drilling, the geologically interesting, 30 km long and up to 120 m thick Hyde-Macraes Shear Zone ( Break in the earth's layer) and estimated the minable gold deposits to be around 10 years (the latest estimate is up to 35 years).
In 1990, gold mining began in open pit mining, which is now operated by the Australian- New Zealand company OceanaGold Corporation , with the highest gold production in New Zealand and the expansion to underground mining .
today
Macraes Flat would be nothing today without OceanaGold . The company is omnipresent with information and display boards, sponsors art projects , organizes touristic tours and gives the impression of owning the estate. The extreme pollution of nature by the toxic mining of gold is countered by renaturation projects and regular release of 10,000 to 12,000 rainbow trout annually in the surrounding waters, which inspires the anglers of the region and is intended to demonstrate the harmlessness of gold mining.
With the Heritage and Art Park Project (HAP) OceanaGold tries to make Macraes Flat more attractive. Every year around 3500 tourists come to visit the gold mine, but the place doesn't have much of them because they usually don't stay. So there remains hope for the future as a leisure and recreation area.
Frasers Pit , one of the pits, should not be backfilled in a few years when it is no longer needed, but instead should be filled up naturally from rain to a lake. It is estimated that this would be completed in 100 years.
literature
- Helen M. Thompson : East of the Rock and Pillar . Otago Centennial Historical Publication . Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd , Dunedin 1949 (English).
- Simon Cox, Dave Craw : Field Trip Guides - East Otago Gold - Annual Conference . Geological Society of New Zealand , 2003, ISBN 0-908678-97-5 (English).
Web links
- Homepage . OceanaGold Corporation,accessed August 3, 2017.
Individual evidence
- ^ John Perry : Pre 1848 Settlers of Otago and Southland - " Evening Star ", Otago Jubilee Edition, March 23rd 1898 . IHUG , accessed on August 3, 2017 .
- ↑ Mini Biographies of Scots and Scots Descendants (Mc) - MacRae to Cape Breton . Electric Scotland , accessed August 3, 2017 .
- ↑ Accommodation - Stanleys Hotel . Otago Central Railway , archived from the original on May 14, 2010 ; accessed on August 28, 2014 (English, original website no longer available).
- ↑ MJ Begbie, D. Craw : Geometry and petrography of stockwork vein swarms, Macraes mine, Otago Schist, New Zealand . In: New Zealand Journal of Geology & Geophysics . Vol. 49 , 2006, pp. 63-73 .
- ↑ Macraes Mine . Jochen Duckeck , accessed on August 3, 2017 .
- ↑ Underground gold mining era begins at Macraes mine . In: Crown Minerals . Ministry of Economic Development , May 31, 2007, archived from the original on October 15, 2008 ; accessed on August 3, 2017 (English, original website no longer available).
- ↑ Michael Friedrich: Shiny business with dirty consequences . In: Greenpeace magazine . No. 3 , 2000 ( online [accessed August 3, 2017]).
- ↑ In the Spotlight - The Macraes' Trout Hatchery - A Gold Mine for Trout! . (PDF 298 kB) OceanaGold , archived from the original on March 9, 2015 ; accessed on April 29, 2019 (English, original website no longer available).
- ^ In the Spotlight The Heritage and Art Park; Implementing the vision . (PDF 3.8 MB) OceanaGold , archived from the original on March 9, 2015 ; accessed on April 29, 2019 (English, original website no longer available).
- ↑ a b Golden Days at Macraes . In: Rural Women Magazine . Issue No. 5 , December 2006, pp. 1 .