May 2018 Project Martha – Historical & Archaeological Background 39 for the pumping, winding, and air-compressor plants. It is by means of the lastnamed that the rock drills are worked.’145 A powerhouse/transformer house (NZAA T13/302) was likely to have been erected at Martha Mine following the completion of the Hora Hora power station, when machinery at the mine was converted to electric-drive.146 The concrete structure, located around 53 metres west-south-west of the Cornish Pumphouse, received the Martha Mine power supply from a sub-station at Waikino which was then reduced through a bank of four 625 K.V.A., 3-phase Siemen’s transformers to 2,000 volts, and then distributed to the various mine machinery.147 The Martha Mine Cornish Pumphouse was decommissioned following the completion of the Hora Hora hydro-electric station, although it was kept in working order until 1929.148 The advent of the First World War (1914-1918) brought further changes to the development of Waihi, and significantly reduced the available work force. Henry Hopper Adams continued to treat tailings from the Gladstone Mine at the Union Battery until around the time of the Waihi Strike, and the battery was eventually demolished in 1915.149 Work on the original Favona shaft (NZAA T13/306) briefly recommenced in 1915 after the consolidated shaft failed to produce payable quartz; however, operations ceased in 1917.150 By the end of the 1910s smaller mining companies, once numerous across Waihi, had disappeared and only the Waihi Gold Mining Company and Grand Junction Company remained (Figure 31). In 1919 the Grand Junction Company acquired the Waihi Extended claim, although extensive prospecting yielded little payable ore.151 Output from the Grand Junction Mine gradually declined and in 1925 the company’s funds were exhausted. Facing closure, an agreement was entered into with the Waihi Gold Mining Company to lease the Grand Junction mine on a profit-sharing basis for a period of 10 years.152 The extensive Grand Junction Battery, processing plant and powerhouse were decommissioned by 1933; however, the Grand Junction Company continued to exist as a commercial entity until 1939, when a meeting of shareholders voted to place it into voluntary liquidation.153 The holdings were purchased by the Martha Gold Mining Company (Waihi) Ltd (which had been formed by the Waihi Gold Mining Company to work the Martha Mine in 1935) and the details were published in the New Zealand Herald in June 1939: ‘An initial distribution of 2s a share, sterling, is being made to shareholders in the Waihi Grand Junction Gold Company, Limited, following the recent decision to go into voluntary liquidation. Warrants for this amount have now been received by 145 Wairarapa Daily Times, 19 December 1913, p.5. 146 NZAA site record T13/302. 147 Ibid.; McAra 1988, pp.201-203. 148 ‘The Cornish Pumphouse’, Oceana Gold Waihi Operations website accessed via: http://www.waihigold.co.nz/about/history/the-cornish-pumphouse/ 149 Lens 2017, pp.74-75. 150 NZAA site record T13/306. 151 NZAA site record T13/312. 152 Ibid.; McAra 1988, p.161; Northern Advocate, 3 August 1926, p.2. 153 NZAA site record T13/312; Climie 1962, p.63; R.H. Hooker. May 2009. Report on Proposed Relocation of Waihi Grand Junction Refinery Building, Waihi. Unpublished report prepared for Newmont Waihi Gold Ltd, p.3. Note: McAra states that ‘the Grand Junction powerhouse continued to operate for a time into the national grid but finally ceased about 1929.’ McAra 1988, p.204.
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