G
Griffin
Guest
Guest
My first report on here, hope it's up to scratch.
My plan today was to go and look around the surface buildings at Mount Wellington mine. It opened in the 70s and closed in 1991 (I think) when the bottom fell out of the tin market and the selling price halved overnight. There's still some machinery on the upper floors of the mill building and I was hoping to get some decent photos of it. Unfortunately the stairs have all been ripped out, so getting up there requires going up a wobbly makeshift ladder of doom.
Anyway, here's a view of the main mill building. The old lift cable to haul the ore (and people) up the shaft snakes all around the site.
The headgear was attached to these ore hoppers until 12 months ago, when the owner decided he'd rip it down before it had a preservation order put on it. He said he needed to in order to make the site safe, which is quite interesting as the three steel girders on the right of the picture (the ones holding the metal chute 30 feet in the air) have all been cut right through with an oxyacetalene torch at ground level. The whole structure could come down at any moment by the looks of it. The ore hoppers are still partly full, and the shaft itself has a concrete slab over it. For some reason though there is a scaffold pole through the concrete which you can drop stones down and listed for the splash 5 seconds later.
Anyway, I headed round to the other end of the mill building to begin my treacherous ascent up the rickety ladder that some mentalist has constructed out of two flimsy pieces of conduit tied together with cheap plastic rope. But, bugger. Secuity must have been round since I was last here as the ladder has been taken down and is now part of the barrier to keep people out.
So I couldn't get up there today. But here's some fairly lame pictures I took on my point and click last time.
Froth floatation tanks
Offices (Chavs have knocked most of the walls down)
Evidence that workers here used hoverboards.
There's quite a few bits and bobs that have just been left knocking around.
It is also possible to get into the underground workings themselves. The way in isn't on the site though, you have to access the mine via some much older workings which connect underground. I haven't photographed this much yet, but here's a picture of the same shaft 200 feet lower down, just to whet your appetites.
I'll be back with some more (hopefully much better) pictures of the underground stuff.
Griffin
My plan today was to go and look around the surface buildings at Mount Wellington mine. It opened in the 70s and closed in 1991 (I think) when the bottom fell out of the tin market and the selling price halved overnight. There's still some machinery on the upper floors of the mill building and I was hoping to get some decent photos of it. Unfortunately the stairs have all been ripped out, so getting up there requires going up a wobbly makeshift ladder of doom.
Anyway, here's a view of the main mill building. The old lift cable to haul the ore (and people) up the shaft snakes all around the site.
The headgear was attached to these ore hoppers until 12 months ago, when the owner decided he'd rip it down before it had a preservation order put on it. He said he needed to in order to make the site safe, which is quite interesting as the three steel girders on the right of the picture (the ones holding the metal chute 30 feet in the air) have all been cut right through with an oxyacetalene torch at ground level. The whole structure could come down at any moment by the looks of it. The ore hoppers are still partly full, and the shaft itself has a concrete slab over it. For some reason though there is a scaffold pole through the concrete which you can drop stones down and listed for the splash 5 seconds later.
Anyway, I headed round to the other end of the mill building to begin my treacherous ascent up the rickety ladder that some mentalist has constructed out of two flimsy pieces of conduit tied together with cheap plastic rope. But, bugger. Secuity must have been round since I was last here as the ladder has been taken down and is now part of the barrier to keep people out.
So I couldn't get up there today. But here's some fairly lame pictures I took on my point and click last time.
Froth floatation tanks
Offices (Chavs have knocked most of the walls down)
Evidence that workers here used hoverboards.
There's quite a few bits and bobs that have just been left knocking around.
It is also possible to get into the underground workings themselves. The way in isn't on the site though, you have to access the mine via some much older workings which connect underground. I haven't photographed this much yet, but here's a picture of the same shaft 200 feet lower down, just to whet your appetites.
I'll be back with some more (hopefully much better) pictures of the underground stuff.
Griffin
