[GOLD MINING] Russell’s Gold Battery on Tararu Creek, Thames Goldfields, Coromandel Peninsula, New Zealand, 1869.

Albumen print photograph, 225 x 170 mm; mounted on section of a leaf of thickish card removed from a nineteenth-century album; in fine condition.

The Auckland Museum (Mundy Album, no. 2) holds a number of Mundy’s photographs of the Thames Goldfields, including another example of the view offered here, which it dates to 1869. The scene shows early quartz-crushing machinery alongside the rocky creek bed, powered by a large waterwheel, with the deforested valley slopes in the background. The Thames gold rush began in August 1867 on the Coromandel Peninsula. Triggered by major gold discoveries in the local quartz reefs, the rush rapidly transformed a quiet coastal area into a booming tent town and New Zealand’s second-largest settlement with a peak population of around 15,000 by 1868.