New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

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The Roaring Meg

simon		Posted : Tuesday, 27 September 2011 9:11:43 AM(UTC)
Rank: Gold Ingot Groups: Registered Joined: 7/01/2011(UTC) Posts: 789 Location: Central Otago Thanks: 33 times Was thanked: 239 time(s) in 150 post(s)		i went for a bit of a stroll up the roaring meg yesterday. always amazing to see what the miners got up to. i've never seen so many old metal pipes. there must be thousands of dollars of them. and thats just the one's lying around and used for road drainage. there's still hundreds of metres of the stuff in precarious positions along the cliffs. a new pipeline now follows some of the route to supply water to the power station. i will try and get some pics up. my original intention was to get up to some old workings. i think they were further up. didn't have the map of it. had seen them in an old book. i don't think there was too much activity up there though.
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simon		Posted : Tuesday, 27 September 2011 9:28:34 AM(UTC)
Rank: Gold Ingot Groups: Registered Joined: 7/01/2011(UTC) Posts: 789 Location: Central Otago Thanks: 33 times Was thanked: 239 time(s) in 150 post(s)		sorry, seem to now have 3 copies of the same. the forum said there had been a serious error and i couldn't upload. strangely enough it did indeed upload each time i tried so i'm not sure why it said otherwise. anyone know how to delete the extra 2?
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Lammerlaw		Posted : Tuesday, 27 September 2011 9:50:24 AM(UTC)
Rank: Gold Ingot Groups: Registered Joined: 24/05/2011(UTC) Posts: 1,721 Thanks: 72 times Was thanked: 579 time(s) in 396 post(s)		Originally Posted by: simon sorry, seem to now have 3 copies of the same. the forum said there had been a serious error and i couldn't upload. strangely enough it did indeed upload each time i tried so i'm not sure why it said otherwise. anyone know how to delete the extra 2? I feel much better about the faux pas I make now Simon! I think Gavin should be able to solve the problem for you. I had always meant to go for a wander up the Roaring Meg but never got beyond the car park - maybe one day when I am not in such a great hurry - I dont believe I have even seen photos of further up there so look forward to any you might be able to get on. I think that historical photos of up the Roaring Meg must be few and far between.

gavin		Posted : Tuesday, 27 September 2011 12:19:27 PM(UTC)
Rank: Gold Ingot Groups: Administrators, Registered Joined: 20/02/2010(UTC) Posts: 1,326 Location: Christchurch Thanks: 736 times Was thanked: 535 time(s) in 287 post(s)		Originally Posted by: simon sorry, seem to now have 3 copies of the same. the forum said there had been a serious error and i couldn't upload. strangely enough it did indeed upload each time i tried so i'm not sure why it said otherwise. anyone know how to delete the extra 2? No worries Simon, I've removed them for you. Not sure what the quirk was - probably something to do with the site being served up from multiple servers instead of a single server. (sorry for the geek speak :P )
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simon		Posted : Tuesday, 27 September 2011 3:13:17 PM(UTC)
Rank: Gold Ingot Groups: Registered Joined: 7/01/2011(UTC) Posts: 789 Location: Central Otago Thanks: 33 times Was thanked: 239 time(s) in 150 post(s)		thanks gavin. it said there was a serious server error and to try again in 50 seconds. which i did and kept getting the same message. it did actually work each time tho.
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simon		Posted : Tuesday, 27 September 2011 9:03:48 PM(UTC)
Rank: Gold Ingot Groups: Registered Joined: 7/01/2011(UTC) Posts: 789 Location: Central Otago Thanks: 33 times Was thanked: 239 time(s) in 150 post(s)		here are a couple of pics of up the roaring meg. File Attachment(s): DSC_6693.jpg DSC_6692.jpg DSC_6690.jpg DSC_6688.jpg DSC_6691.jpg
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auldrider		Posted : Thursday, 29 September 2011 10:20:20 PM(UTC)
Rank: Gold Flake Groups: Registered Joined: 28/04/2010(UTC) Posts: 16 Location: Otematata, North Otago, South Island, New Zealand. Thanks: 1 times Was thanked: 3 time(s) in 3 post(s)		Originally Posted by: simon i went for a bit of a stroll up the roaring meg yesterday. always amazing to see what the miners got up to. i've never seen so many old metal pipes. there must be thousands of dollars of them. and thats just the one's lying around and used for road drainage. there's still hundreds of metres of the stuff in precarious positions along the cliffs. a new pipeline now follows some of the route to supply water to the power station. i will try and get some pics up. my original intention was to get up to some old workings. i think they were further up. didn't have the map of it. had seen them in an old book. i don't think there was too much activity up there though. Why do you assume that the metal pipes were anything to do with mining? I recall that a hydro generator pipeline was damaged by vacuum up there and was replaced. That is possibly what you saw.
		I try to learn from the mistakes of other's, I haven't got enough time left to make them all myself!

simon		Posted : Thursday, 29 September 2011 10:32:29 PM(UTC)
Rank: Gold Ingot Groups: Registered Joined: 7/01/2011(UTC) Posts: 789 Location: Central Otago Thanks: 33 times Was thanked: 239 time(s) in 150 post(s)		some of the pipes were of the older hand riveted type. often these were taken from gold sites and used for irrigation purposes. usually they didn't go too far though as they aren't light. i'm not sure when the power scheme got going. i'm guessing around the 1930's? some gold mining did take place up the roaring meg, also known back then as the kirtle burn. i think it was a bit higher up than the dams though. a lot of these small power generation schemes have gone through makeovers in recent years to increase their output so yeah that may be why there are now 2 sets of pipes. some did look pretty new. i know down at the kawarau river they too water in a syphon across the kawarau from the roaring meg to sluice the south bank of the kawarau. if you go up the roaring meg track a little you get a good view of this. you can appreciate how high from the existing river they were getting gold. or at least, looking for gold.
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