Not many people realise that Wainuiomata has a history of gold prospecting. As far back as 1869, Hugh Sinclair, one of Wainuiomata’s original settlers, discovered gold-bearing quartz on his land. Over the decades that followed, reports of gold and further prospecting appeared in other parts of the district, including the Northern Forest and Gollans Valley.
The discoveries were never large enough to turn Wainuiomata into a major goldfield, but they attracted enough interest for prospectors to sink shafts, examine quartz reefs and send samples away for testing. Some of those samples were confirmed to contain gold, although generally in relatively small quantities.
Much of the early prospecting focused on quartz reefs running through the hills. Gold could also potentially be carried downstream from these reefs into creeks and rivers, meaning the search was not confined to the hillsides themselves.
Today, the story of gold in Wainuiomata is largely forgotten, but old newspaper reports, scientific papers and traces of early prospecting show that the search was very real. Somewhere beneath the bush-covered hills, the same gold-bearing rocks that attracted prospectors more than 150 years ago are still there.
