The Archaeology of the Come in Time Quartz Battery, Bendigo, Otago, New Zealand more

The Come in Time Quartz Battery Area at Bendigo, Central Otago ©Lloyd Carpenter, University of Canterbury, 2011. Published in Archaeology in New Zealand (April 2011 issue) A visit to the newly-restored Come in Time Battery near Bendigo is worth the time and effort – not to mention the dusty road and the eight gates you’ll need to open – to get there. Besides the very substantial quartz battery, quite a bit of evidence of the mining which took place in the area remains. Generally speaking, as tangible relics of the Central Otago gold rush, quartz stamper batteries have not fared well; their timbers are far too useful for farm shed framing and their stamp heads are frequently victims of the high price of scrap metal. Out of the seven stamper battery sites at Bendigo, only the Come in Time remains on its site in Rise and Shine Valley. But to say it stands on its ‘own’ site is confused by the fact that this battery contains parts of batteries previously erected at three other sites on Bendigo and at two other goldfields in Central Otago. The Come in Time Quartz Battery after restoration in 2007. The Rise and Shine Valley proved to be a region riven with faintly auriferous reefs offering hints of golden wealth in depth which never quite added up to a payable proposition. For over thirty years, the Bendigo Correspondents of both the Cromwell Argus and Dunstan Times celebrated finds on claims, offering up breathless descriptions of the likely future riches to emerge from claims, the stone from which would then prove remarkably effective at resisting all attempts to profit from its exploitation. Few ventures paid, but all left their mark on the landscape, with adits and shafts, tramways and water races, sluice faces and quartz stamper battery sites. At the Come in Time site, all except sluice scarps may be seen. The Come in Time had its genesis in mid-1880, when Bendigo resident and coal carrier John Kane (photo left) was delivering coal from Bannockburn to the homes of the Rise and Shine Sluicing Syndicate miners. He stopped at an intriguing-looking patch of red stone on a sharp ridge between Shepherd and Rise and Shine Creeks and found gold-bearing quartz there. The Argus was ecstatic, celebrating the discovery of a new quartz reef with typical sanguinity: ‘a promising quartz discovery was made at Bendigo .... the reef is said to show two feet wide, carrying gold freely.’1 Dispatched to see for himself, the Argus’ Bendigo Correspondent announced 'I can vouch for its very promising appearance on the surface.’ 2 Kane arranged with Charles Todd, Manager of the Cromwell Company to get five tons of stone crushed, employing a workman to get the stone out. The same paper noted that £100 (about 30 week’s wages for a quartz miner) had been refused for a sixth share in the new venture. 3 The first trial crushing proved to be as good as the paper first hinted, with 6oz 11dwt of gold deThe Come in Time Mine clared.4 Confirmed in their enthusiasm of the new venture, the Argus reporter next declared that ‘The Come in Time ... is looking remarkably well, and promises to be a sure fortune to the lucky discoverers. It certainly is the most remarkable quartz discovery made in Otago as yet, and in a career of 16 years' quartz-mining I have seen nothing like it. I hardly know how to describe it. It is undoubtedly a true lode, but it's immense size when compared with anything previously found in Otago throws me or anyone else that has seen it completely astray.’5 Kane and his partners set to work, forming a company and hiring men to exploit the find. They rented the tail water of the Rise and Shine sluicers to power a water wheel, albeit after it was re-routed from an ©Lloyd Carpenter, University of Canterbury, 2011. Published in Archaeology in New Zealand (April 2011 issue) older race on the opposite side of the valley, while a race cut from Shepherd’s 6 Creek provided pure water suitable to run the tables the battery. By August they announced they would form a ‘Joint Stock Company’, that they had purchased the old Eureka - formerly Alta (see below) - battery which sat on a site on the side of the hill and across the valley from their claim and that they would relocate this to their ground. 7 Their new battery had a thorough overhaul as it was rebuilt, with the foundations replaced by new logs. It was erected about 150 yards below the initial workings, with a double tram worked by a steel rope built to convey the quartz to the mill. Since there was a good fall, the full trucks were able to pull back the empties, reducing the work needed. 8 That they were on to a good thing was confirmed by the workmen cutting the new tramway into the line of reef. They found that the whole spur where the Come In Time claim was situated was a network of quartz and conglomerate, and all carrying gold with an average expected return of ‘half an ounce per ton’.9 At about this time John Kane sold his shareholding to Bendigo miner William Cameron, 10 using the proceeds to purchase additional land at Grandview. Another shareholder sold out to Cromwell storekeeper D.A. Jolly sometime before the end of 1880. 11 In less than eight weeks the Come in Time battery was reducing stone12and at the end of December, declared a result of a cake of 110 ounces from 350 tons of stone13 which was less than 10dwt to the ton, but which still returned the shareholders about £10 per week per man.14 And then, in a pattern which is repeated over and over in the quartz mining history of the Rise and Shine Valley, the newspapers fall silent on the Come in Time Quartz Mining Company. Given the declared ease and low costs of stone extraction, the professed well-capitalised nature of the company, the experience of the ‘practical miners’ who made up the shareholding and the payable, if not spectacular returns, this mystery is frustrating. Either way, they closed their operations sometime in 1881. In early 1882, the Come In Time battery was sold to the Last Shot Quartz Mining Company, who dismantled and re-erected it on their claim near the old Elizabeth ground on the Carrick Range. 15 In 1908 the Come In Time was reborn. Mechesidec Bospednic (Dick) Edwards was a veteran miner (photo at left) who had worked for the Cromwell Company from its early years, was employed as a professional prospector with William Pengelly by the Cromwell Prospecting Association in 1885 – 87,16 then had an extended run as one of the gang managers with William Pengelly working a tribute in the Cromwell mine through much of the 1890’s. He had briefly retired from mining in 1897, taking over the lease of the Temperance Hotel (which, despite its nomenclature, offered alcohol for sale) with the usual entreaties to ‘all my friends and customers’ and advising ‘strict attention to the comforts of the travelling public’ 17 before he went back mining in the Nevis in 1898. 18 He continued to support several mining ventures from his business in Cromwell, achieving, it is clear from frequent mention of him in the Argus, a considerable level of local popularity and respect. 19 When he announced he would undertake a careful reconsideration of the Come In Time Mine in mid-1908, Cromwell investors took an immediate interest. David Jolly, shareholder in the first Come in Time venture, was the most prominent of a significant group which backed Edwards, accompanying him to the old mine to take samples for assaying at the Karangahake School of Mines. When these samples averaged a declared 13dwt gold and 8dwt silver per ton,20 the excitement was considerable. A company was formed, with a registered capital of £2000 in £1 shares. This acquired the old Cromwell Company Mine and its machinery, immediately investing capital in shifting half of the Matilda Battery from its site at the head of Specimen Gully at Bendigo to the Come in Time site. 21 This new Come in Time Battery was a jigsaw of other machines, with the Matilda battery comprising parts from the original Cromwell Company ‘Solway’ machine (which was built from one previously operated at Hindon 22) erected at the mouth of Bendigo Creek, the old Aurora machine (formerly the Criterion Company machine from near Arrowtown 23) which had worked high above Logantown and finally at its new location, it was set on footings and powered by a water race from the previous Come in Time battery emplaced there. For all the testing by the School of Mines and the calibre of Edwards as a miner, the new Come in Time venture proved to be a financial disaster that eclipsed all previous quartz failures in the Rise and Shine Valley. In June 1910 the Argus revealed that in 1909, a total expenditure of £508 17s 3d had earned 1oz 19dwt 18 grs or £7 13s 11d. Then in 1910 after investing £1394 5s 4d more – a total which exceeded the paid-up capital by over £500 – the earnings were a tiny 4ozs 13dwt, or just £18 1s 3d. It seems surprising that someone was prepared to purchase the plant of this newly-failed Come In Time Company, especially given the very public disastrous result, but according to the Mines Department Quartz Mines Return of 1910, J. Dunnery and M. Birley did just that, going on to crush 350 tons of stone for 50oz in September and 77 tons crushed in October for gold with a value £54 1s 48d. 24 At this point they concluded that the Come in Time Mine had nothing more to offer and ceased work. ©Lloyd Carpenter, University of Canterbury, 2011. Published in Archaeology in New Zealand (April 2011 issue) In 1913 the shareholders of the latest reincarnation of an Alta Syndicate declared themselves excited by the prospects in a new quartz lode on the Alta ground. They immediately made plans for the construction of an aerial ropeway to convey carefully selected stone to their newly-acquired battery, the old ‘Come In Time’ machine on the other side of the valley.25 They re-fitted the battery and crushed a trial quantity of Alta stone, but switched their attention to the much larger area of prospective stone in an outcrop of the Come in Time lode, on the Shepherd’s Creek side of the ridge near the battery.26 In the 1919 report to the Mines Department, it was clear that the main focus of the new Alta group27 was actually opening out the open cut area of the Come In Time claim area, crushing 100 tons of ore in the year.28 They found little more than hopes of gold in this part of the workings, but the top unit of their aerial ropeway remains near the crest of the hill opposite the Come in Time (see above) The last owner of the Come in Time was Mr. David C. Betts, who in 1933 leased the area together with the Alta site, in response to the excitement generated by the newly-formed Rise and Shine quartz claim.29 When the Bendigo Rise and Shine Company emerged in 1934, they were offered the Come In Time battery for £50. It is indicative of just how long the battery had stood there neglected, when this offer was rejected. The Rise and Shine men dismissively noted that the Come In Time battery ‘is in a dilipidated *sic+ condition, having been robbed of most of its fittings. It is of an old, obsolete type .... *which would+ make the cost of reconditioning higher than the cost of a new Come in Time Battery before restoration battery.’30 It Alta has remained standing in the Otago weather until it was reTram way cuttin Alt g aW stored as part of an Otago Goldfields Goldfields Heritage ate rR ac Trust project in 2008. e Other significant remains from quartz mining can be seen at the Come in Time site. Across the valley a collection of lines and some abandoned sites hint at more history there and this is the location of the first quartz venture in the Rise and Shine Valley. The Alta Company had appeared in in late-1869, when auriferous quartz was found below and slightly south of the Rise and Shine sluicing ground by Welshman Sam Williams.31 The ‘monied men’32 who bought the Alta off Williams purchased and erected a battery to crush their stone, renting The original Alta Survey, registered in 1871 ka Eure Tram way Alta Battery site Tailings dump the Rise and Shine Sluicing Syndicate’s water which flowed down the gully adjacent to their claim,33 cutting a race to drive their water wheel34 and constructing a tramway from their mine to the machine, a construction which included a twin track self-acting line from the cutting at the top of the slope down to the battery site.35 The Alta battery site is visible across the valley from the Come in Time site and their water race is the higher of the two lines across the hill face. The tramway is very clear to see, and a deep cutting, made to facilitate the double-action tramway is easily found. A combination of abruptly falling gold returns and difficulties with separating gold from scheelite in the ore36 saw the The Original Eureka Co venture fail and the company was wound up in Survey, dated 1876 early 1873.37 Next on the scene were the owners of the Eureka Company, who were developing a reef system found on border of the Rise and Shine Syndicate’s ground. They purchased the Alta plant,38 began construction of a mile-long tramway from their claim to the Alta battery, rented the tail water of the Rise and Shine sluicers and embarked on driving an adit into the hill.39 Their tramway remains where it was built, carved into the steeply-sloping Ris e& Sh ine C ree Alt k aW ate rR ac e e in Com w Time ater race Eu rek aT ram wa y Alt aB att ery Sit e Location: standing beside Alta Battery site sides of the hill on the south side of the Rise and Shine Valley. It is parallel with and two metres below the Alta water race. The Eureka also failed due to the fact that the gold in Eureka stone could not be freed from the pyrites present with it40 and a devastating flood ruined the company’s efforts in its deepest shaft.41 As was noted above, this battery was sold and relocated to the Come in Time site in 1880. The old battery site is very hard to see, but can be identified by the extensive damage wrought by the disposal of mullock down The Alta Mine open cut the slope over the years. But the Alta continued to intrigue miners. It had shown promise then failed – but too fast, some thought. In 1897 August Sorenson (above right), a Norwegian quartz miner from Victoria, employee at the Cromwell Mine for over twenty-five years and part of William Pengelly’s tribute party working the old Cromwell Company mine in the 1890’s, took out a new lease on the Alta ground, finding stone which, after a small trial crushing, he announced confidently would ‘return 4 oz to the ton.’ 42 In what to wearied former investors in the Alta claim must have seemed déjà vu, the Otago Daily Times of February 1898 breathlessly declared that Sorenson and his associates had found ‘a good solid reef, 3ft wide, carrying payable gold’ on their claim.43 Even the New Zealand Mines Record joined in, speaking up the prospects facing Sorenson, with estimates of returns from stone hand-crushed in Cromwell running to 30oz per ©Lloyd Carpenter, University of Canterbury, 2011. Published in Archaeology in New Zealand (April 2011 issue) ©Lloyd Carpenter, University of Canterbury, 2011. Published in Archaeology in New Zealand (April 2011 issue) ton for one sample and 10oz per ton for the second.44 Certainly gold was found, with some ‘good patches’ of stone, but not in quantities that paid the cost of raising and crushing it, so the syndicate abandoned further effort and any more expenditure at the end of 1898.45 Nothing daunted, another syndicate of ‘working The Alta Mine, Holmes & Co stamper battery The Alta Mine open cut miners’ took over the Alta in 1899 and began work, crushing an eight ton parcel of rock at the Cromwell Company site and gaining a small cake of 12oz 14dwt for their efforts, ‘well above wages’ for the miners.46 These miners were all members of one of the tribute teams working the old Cromwell Company mine and a renewed higher level of yield from stone at that mine distracted them away from the Alta mine to work on the larger, more proven site at Bendigo.47 Next to the Alta was Holmes and co, six more ‘working miners’ who drove a cross-cut in the sixty foot shaft sunk by Sorenson.48And in a repeat of all previous claims on the Alta, gold was found there. But unlike the previous attempts, this group seem to have found stone of a more consistent nature and purchased the 5-head stamper battery from the defunct Jubilee Mine at the Eureka (later the 1934 Bendigo Rise and Shine Company) site. 50 Using the old Eureka tramway, they moved this battery from its old foundations to its new site at the Alta beside a stone hopper they constructed to accept Alta stone.51 In a first for the Bendigo area, their battery was driven by a 7-hp diesel engine. This, the newest of the Alta groups clearly had the greatest level of persistence of all the incarnations of the Alta mine, with reports in 1904 and 1905 that they were still working there, 52 although the Mines Reports of 1904 made it clear that the work was as sporadic as the scattered patches of payable stone, with comment that poor returns in the past year had reduced the workforce to one miner/prospector, but that a rich patch of scheelite had been struck.53 By mid-1905 even the prospector was gone and the Alta mine closed.54 Sandwiched between these periods of gold miners working at the Alta was Bendigo miner and farmer, Walter Faithful (left). In 1900 he recognised the commercial possibilities from an increased international interest in scheelite. With this mineral fetching £55-70 per ton in England, it was worth pursuing.55However, like most ‘promising-looking’ prospects at the Alta, nothing came of his interest until the Cameron Brothers acquired his ground in early 1908. John Cameron applied for a lease on the fifteen acres of the Alta area, but in a telling move, did not specify that it was only gold he sought.56 He and his brother then ignored the supposed reefs and the consistently-lauded-but-failed gold prospects to work the scheelite seams. It so happened that in the pursuit of scheelite they found auriferous quartz in a seam which was – following the well-established Alta cant of the last forty years – declared to have ‘every prospect of ... turning out a great success.’ 57 Notwithstanding the occasional fillip to gold-mining hopes, the Camerons worked the mine mainly for the scheelite, doing so with some success and, even clearing £100 in one notable week in 1908.58 From mines reports in the Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives, the Camerons appear to have worked the Alta claim for several years, although it is clear from 1909 comments that the small battery erected in 1902 was derelict and engineless, thanks to the liquidation of the Alta assets in 1905, entailing the sale of the engine to Morven Hills Station for electricity.59 This battery ruin remains at the Alta mine site today, and the mine workings, which appear to be a long open cut, but which disguises an extensive set of underground workings remain as a long scar across the spur. In the gully near the Alta site is the chimney of an old hut, while those brave enough to confront the briar around the original Alta battery site will also see a stone chimney from the old blacksmith’s hut and the entrance to the adit into the mine. Other archaeological remains in the Come in Time area include two stone huts across the Rise and Shine stream and downhill from the battery, although these are quite difficult to get to and are in a ruined state (shown above). ©Lloyd Carpenter, University of Canterbury, 2011. Published in Archaeology in New Zealand (April 2011 issue) NOTE: Use of this research without citation is theft. 1. CA, June 16, 1880, p.4 2. CA, June 26, 1880, p.3 3. Ibid. 4. CA, July 6, 1880, p.3 5. CA, July 13, 1880 6. Tail water from sluicing is completely useless for gold tables on a battery, as the sludge carries away the gold with it. The water race on the face of the hill from the Rise and Shine is quite distinct over most of its length, while the Shepherd’s Creek one has been damaged by later mining. Note that the latter race should not be confused with a race built to take Rise and Shine water OVER to Shepherd’s Creek (built in the late 1860’s) which extends eastwards from the Come in Time site. 7. CA, August 31, 1880 8. CA, October 5, 1880 9. Ibid. 10. CA, December 30, 1880 11. CA, July 20, 1908 12. CA, November 30, 1880 13. Ibid. 14. OW, January 15, 1880, p.9. 15. OW, November 4, 1882, p.21 16. CA, April 25, 1885 17. CA, April 13, 1897 18. CA, April 19, 1898 19. For example, a report in the Otago Witness of March 22, 1905 (p.5) details his work as a Justice of the Peace and executor of wills in Cromwell. 20. CA, July 20, 1908 21. Ibid. 22. DT, Sept 4, 1868 23. Barry, W.J., Past, Present, and Men of the Times (1897), McKee and Co., Wellington, pp. 80-82. 24. Archives NZ Dunedin Office ‘Mining Reports - Returns From Quartz - Mines Otago, Central Otago Area 1904-1939’ AATJ 9163 D345 box 152/f 25. AJHR, 1913, C-2, p.34 26. AJHR, 1914, C-2, p.49 27. The report in the AJHR (AJHR, 1919 C-2, p.35) makes it clear that this was a group headed by H. Birley and party. 28. Ibid. 29. Letter file, March 1935, Mines Dept to and from David C. Betts (Document N10/13/604), NZ Archives, Rise and Shine - Austen 30. Letter dated June 10, 1935 from C.A. Aitchison, Company Secretary of the Bendigo Rise and Shine Gold Mining Company Ltd to the Under-Secretary of the Mines Dept, Wellington (Document N10/13/604), NZ Archives, Wellington Office, ‘Ordinary Prospecting Licence 308/32 - 20 acres Rise and Shine gully Wakefield Survey District - F.S. Austen - Bendigo - 03 April 1933 - 08 May 1953’, MD Series 1, box 1294, record 10/13/604, part 1 31. DT, December 17, 1869 32. DT, January 14, 1870 33. ODT, July 20, 1870, p.2 34. Ibid. This seems to have been the first example of the use of a turbine wheel to drive a battery, instead of the usual overshot wheel in use in the Aurora and Cromwell batteries (see CA, September 19, 1871) 35. CA, June 13, 1871 36. Part of the report “Report on the Gold Fields of New Zealand” 1875, Section H-3, Appendix 6 ‘Auriferous Reefs of the Bendigo District’, p.46 37. DT, April 11, 1873, p.1 38. CA, October 13, 1875 39. CA, May 12, 1875 40. OW, October 28, 1897, p.30 41. Letter from G.W. Lowe to Mr J. Jessep, Deputy Chairman of the Unemployment Board, Wellington dated 30/3/33 (NZ Archives, Wellington Office, AATJ/9160/140g 1/85) 42. OW, August 19, 1897, p.21 43. ODT, February 10, 1898, p.3 44. NZ Mines Record, Volume 1, 1897-8, p.204 45. OW, May 6, 1903, p.25 46. ODT, September 14, 1899, p.6 47. OW, September 21, 1899, p.34 48. OW, May 6, 1903, p.25 49. OW, August 13, 1902, p.21 50. AHJR 1902-3 (report dated October 17, 1902), C-3, p.109 51. Note that this was over the hill from the original Alta battery site. 52. OW, May 18, 1904, p.24 53. AHJR, 1904, C-3, p.67 54. AHJR, 1905, C-3, p.68 55. ODT, April 3, 1900, p.3 56. CA, September 7, 1908 57. CA, October 12, 1908 58. OW, December 2, 1908, p.39 59. AJHR, 1906, C-3, p.61 Lloyd Carpenter B.Sc., Dip.Tchg., Dip.Bib.Min, Grad.Dip.Arts, B.A.(hons) is a 47 year-old Maori scholar from Ngati Toa Rangatira. He has worked in sales, the insurance industry, has taught at both an exclusive private school and a low socio-economic high school, was a Salvation Army officer and is now studying towards his Ph.D at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. His thesis is titled “150 years of riches: How the Central Otago Gold-rush Shaped New Zealand Culture, Literature and Society.” He is currently writing a narrative history of the abandoned gold town of Bendigo for use as a case study to examine the influence of the gold rush on New Zealand, including and especially the myths and narratives of the era. He is speaking at the ‘On the Surface: The Heritage of Mines and Mining’ Conference 14-16 April 2011, Innsbruck, Austria on ‘Beyond a Spectacular Beauty: The Heritage of Bendigo, Central Otago’.