Another goldfields walk in the Gentle Annie area which is near Conical Hill, near Hokitika. - ALBUM -

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DescriptionDid another goldfields walk today and was a little surprised at how high up the hill I came across signs of prospecting, mining and tapping of tiny water courses for mining water. This was in the Gentle Annie area which is near Conical Hill.

Photo 1: This looked very suspicious despite being high above other gold workings. It is well up the slopes of Gentle Annie Hill.

Photo 2: There was an adit there alright with a tidy looking drive heading in a long way.

Photo 3:Big sluice hole eaten out of the terrace at the head of Greek Mick's Creek. An old hut site dates this mining to the 1890's. This is on the way to Gentle Annie if you go via the historic Butchers Gully track.Map^[1]ContributorGlenn Johnston

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Location (city or town)Gentle AnnieGreek Mick's CreekConical Hill

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Category TagGoldmining

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Date Created9th June 2021CommentsGlenn Johnston
There is a chance that this drive ("tunnel") which starts off in soil with just the odd larger rock was a prospecting drive put in by the Hokitika Quartz Mining Company which was hoping to intersect a payable quartz reef at depth. If so this drive would date to 1878. The company was wound up in 1879 as the long drive failed to find anything payable. In fact they only crossed a few stringers which had a low gold yield. Despite quite a few attempts to find payable quartz reef gold at Gentle Annie all attempts could be deemed failures as the quartz tested was either barren or of too low a yield to be payable. However alluvial gold found on the lower slopes and terraces of Gentle Annie and the water courses draining it was payable in places and kept a small number of miners employed over many years.
Glenn Johnston
Note on this map snippet the line of quartz reef shown passing more or less through Gentle Annie Hill. On the ground in places you can see where prospectors have done surface trenching looking to expose quartz near the surface.

Glenn Johnston
There were various small gold rushes in the Gentle Annie area over the years. During the 1894 rush someone was enthused enough to apply for an Accommodation House (pub) licence. I'm not sure if it went ahead or not?
May be an image of text that says 'NOTICE OF APPLICATION FOR AN ACCOMODATION LICENSE. I JOHN COLLINS, of Back Creek, do hereby give notice that I. desire to obtain, and will, at the next licensing meeting, to be holden at HoKITIKA, on the sixth day of JUNE next, apply for a certificate authorising the issue of an accomodation license for a house, situate on à hill known as Gentle Annie in the Provincial District of Westland. Dated the 15th day of May 1894. JOHN COLLINS, Bachelor.'

Glenn Johnston
The Accomodation House License application for Gentle Annie was to be held at Hokitika and the quartz mining companies had names including Hokitika and Kanieri. Yes there are a few Gentle Annie's around even on the West Coast.

Glenn Johnston
From 1883 onward there was quite a bit of prospecting for coal and some mining for it both at Gentle Annie Terrace and in some of the gullies and slopes behind the terrace. At the back of the terrace some drives and shafts were used to produce both alluvial gold and coal. Miners are recorded as using locally produced coal to point their picks. Not many people know there was/is a coal field within 10 miles of Hokitika.

Glenn Johnston
The drive pictured is almost certainly the one mentioned in this 1884 reference to Dunedin mining engineer Denniston's report. The coal was of good quality but expensive to extract because of the steeply dipping seams and width of seams that would not have mattered if the seams were closer to horizontal.
No photo description available.

Glenn Johnston
Craig Angela Bell Craig it took a few trips but I found an old coal mine at higher altitude than those destroyed when the "Bluebottle" radiata pine plantation went in at Coal Creek. This one is about 330m from the Gentle Annie high point.

Glenn Johnston
Interesting! Papers past reveals that the Kanieri Coal Field was in Gentle Annie Terrace and both below it and above it. The map I posted above shows coal measures. As recently as the 1920's there is a report of a three man party mining coal somewhere below below the bottom of the Gentle Terrace. As an aside there are also coal deposits near the top of Mt Camelback and at Bald Hill further south.

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Another goldfields walk in the Gentle Annie area which is near Conical Hill, near Hokitika. - ALBUM -

Editing is temporarily disabled