The day dawned clear ,warm and overcast, The Operator fed his new friends who were quaking at the door of our camper and we shipped out to explore Thames nice and early.
During our drive back to the camp last night from the pub, The Operator noticed a weird light hovering above the town, because of the twists and turns of the road we couldn’t really get a handle on where, or what the UFO shaped disc was…The Operator quickly solved that mystery by spying the tower on the hill. We drove up the hill and came to the towns cenotaph, a remembrance of all the local lads who lost their lives in the Great and Second World Wars. What a beautiful view it commanded of the town!
Rosie’s fishy friend to the left is a mailbox and newspaper holder that was in one of the driveways on the way up to the lookout. It is totally made out of ceramic and is gorgeous! Rosie didn’t poke around too long as the road was treacherously steep and skinny but I couldn’t work out how to get the mail out of the fish…..
Thames itself was ‘discovered’ by Captain James Cook in 1769 and he named the area Thames as ‘it bore a striking resemblance to that river in England’…..Gold was first discovered in 1867 and 10,000 English settlers swamped the wee town in a year! They cleared and felled the bush and started digging into the hillsides. Various towns in the Coromandel have gold mine tours, Rosie and the Operator opted for the The Goldrush Experience in Thames, if you are pushed for time or maybe don’t want to spend alot of time, this is perfect, Three quarters of the site is self guided and there is a 10min underground tour of the mine with a guide. Technically 3/4 of an hour is all you will need and you have a perfect understanding of the mining operations.
Inside the mine it is so claustrophobic you wonder how these men could work a 12 hour shift! The air is still and dank, the walls and ceiling loom in on you, darkness before and after the halo of your lamplight, it feels like being buried alive…and that’s just standing here, the exertion of backbreaking rock collecting and pick axing the rock face, well, it makes Rosie feel faint just thinking about it. The mines were developed by experienced mining men from Cornwall, apparently they were smaller and shorter than the average man today…hence the
height of the mining tunnels being so short….they even bought their own pit ponies with them, wee miniature horses. The horses worked and lived underground, they came topside once a year on Christmas day and had to be blinkered so the sun wouldn’t damage their eyes as they were used to the dark…personally Rosie didn’t consider that a ‘treat’ if they were used to being underground…the sunlight would have been terrifying torture for them….To the right, is what the miners were looking for, veins of quartz, the white stripe, that hold the silver and the gold. In a nutshell, explosive charges were laid to bring down rock, men with pick axes broke it up into football size chunks and young apprentices loaded carts and pushed them with the help of a poor pony to the surface or onto a lift, below, to be pulled to the
the surface. The next step, the rocks were put into a stamper, five large steam driven battery rams crushed the rock to sand, the sand was sent onto a vibrating flood table and the vibrations separated the sand from the gold, as the gold was heavier it stayed glittering near the top of the table, where the black band is.
The tailing’s, or the sand waste was dumped outside the mine, there was so much waste over the time of the mine that it is now reclaimed land and holds a wee suburb on top of it. The twist to the tail is that this vibrating table was very inefficient….it only captured 40% of the gold that came out of the mine….considering in 1871 10 ton of bullion came out of this mine ($200 million dollars worth)….there is alot of gold under those peoples houses. It was told to us that in the 1870s there were over 100 stamper batteries operating in the town. Sunday was a day of rest and all the stampers were turned off….Sunday night no one in the town could sleep…. because it was too quiet….this machine makes a hell of a racket when they turn it on! On the self guided portion of the tour is the treasure trove of photos which are housed in the old camp office, they are a remarkable collection recording the times of the rush, excellent quality depictions that are worth a look at the life and times of this hardy bunch!
Next stop is town, it was Saturday morning and the Grahamtown market was in full swing. The market is housed under the cover of the shop veranda’s and laid out on the footpath on the northern side of the the long, well kept main street. It is held every Saturday from 9.00am – Noon and sells everything from fruit and vegetables, cheeses, salami, honey, jams to cat scratching posts (very reasonably priced and well made) to carved Totara post bottles (Rosie bought two) paintings, jewellery…you name it was there…and soooo reasonably priced.
The shopping experience was relaxed and fun, all of the locals were very friendly and the permanent retail shops were great as well, such alot of variety. Nearly every shop had a box of bagged fruit, avocados or plums, outside the shop and they were being sold for a couple of bucks for a 2 kilo bag,
Rosie presumes they were the overflow from home fruit trees in this veritable garden of eden. The mussel sausage sign was very intriguing….maybe another day….. Rosie did find the most beautiful arts and crafts based shop ever…Bounty…. check them out on facebook under Bounty-Store, gorgeous! I will show you what I bought there later.
Spray painted on the footpath at regular intervals was this angry, loudly proclaiming sign….it kind of went against the vibe of the town…..still, rules are rules I suppose.
After a wonderful wander and chat with the locals time was drifting on…its horrible to have to look at your watch when you are on holiday but, we have other things we want to see so we left town and carried on up the coastal highway.
The road is narrow, and, as I have said hugs the waters edge, it alternates between sandy coves and rocky bays with twists and turns in between small housing settlements built on the roads edge, all are backed by native bush which soars the cliff face and each house commands a breathtaking view of the still calm waters reflecting the overcast sky. It is quiet and isolated feeling, it is paradise!
Navigating the twists and turns of the roadway something that has never happened before starts occurring…the doors to the cupboards on the camper start opening and flinging our stuff around. The poor old coffee peculator (Yes, Rosie and The Operator must have fresh filtered coffee in the morning) took a tumble into the sink and The Operator pulled over to reset everything.
The road is certainly not the most winding we have been on, this is very bizarre….Rosie feels a rumbling in her stomach and was about to suggest to The Operator that we stop for lunch when a sign flashed past offering a bounty from the sea in the form of a 
fritter. We pulled into the bay parking area and there was the fritter caravan taking centre stage in front of the sweeping sea. We placed our order, Whitebait for Rosie and Mussels for The Operator and sat down in the sun to await our lunch, ‘I will call you when they are ready’, the friendly fritter shack guys says. The cicadas are chirping and the sun kisses your skin, stretch out close your eyes….and the next minute your fritters are ready….served classically on a slice of bread with a dash of lemon juice and a swirl of tomato sauce and you have a a hearty lunch for $5 each. They were big!
One family had the beach to themselves at ‘fritter bay’, they were having a fritter picnic on the sand. A lonely tractor pulling a boat trailer was parked waiting for its owner to return after a days fishing, a few cars were coming and going from the fritter shack, other than that this was pretty representative of all of the small bays…there are more beaches here than people. You certainly could pick a bay and be the only ones on it, magic! As the road climbed higher I though it was impossible for the scenery to get even more beautiful.
http://www.top10.co.nz/parks/coromandel/ Every man bought his boat to the campground, it was full
Bary himself is a potter and artist, the railway is set within the premises of a working artists co op, glass blowers, potters, painters and today, Nate, the blacksmith work on projects that enrich their knowledge of art in the peaceful surroundings that Barry has created full of rustic charm.
The inspirational narrow gauge train takes you on a journey through native kauri and totara bush, all of which has been re planted by Barry and team after mining excavation left it desolate.
the train platform….there is the most beautiful hand blown glass eels lounging on the rocks. The vista is beautiful! Then its back on the train for the return journey home. From start to finish the tour takes about an hour, it is fun filled and very different to what I have ever been on, it is a credit to the man with the dream!
