Union Quartz Mining Company 1876-81

The Union company probed the reef via adits (horizontal tunnels) and in 1878 erected a 10 head, steam-powered stamp battery in Devils Creek to crush gold-bearing quartz.  Coal mines were established farther up Devils Creek to supply the battery steam boilers.  All that effort brought just 64 ounces of gold from 600 tons of ore, which was not profitable.  The company soon folded, selling its battery to the neighbouring Oriental company in 1881. 

Oriental Gold Mining Company 1876-86

This company also tunnelled for the reef and had its quartz crushed in the Union battery which it bought in 1881.  However the company had little more success than its neighbour and went into liquidation in 1886. 

Globe Gold Mining Company, 1882-96

Formed to work a new find of quartz on the Union claim, this company started with just seven shareholders who put up the money for a new 20-head water-powered battery at Crushington, supplied by an aerial ropeway nearly two kilometres long.  Their faith in the enterprise was not rewarded during the next few years as results were poor, mining ceased and parcels of shares were virtually given away and the company faced financial ruin.  However in late 1886 two prospectors, who had been employed in a last-ditch bid to find payable quartz, located a reef 300 metres west of the ground worked earlier and very near the boundary with the abandoned Oriental claim.  Three metres wide, the new find assayed at two ounces of gold per ton of quartz.

After calling up more capital from the hard-pressed shareholders, the Globe company sank a vertical shaft on the promising reef.  Men and materials were raised and lowered by a winch that gained its power from a waterwheel near the battery two kilometres away via an endless rope – a remarkable technical achievement.  Success was immediate and sustained. When the company sold out to the London-based Consolidated Goldfields of New Zealand in 1896 it had won 35,457 ounces of gold valued at £141,059, paid out half that in wages and returned shareholders more than £40,950 for the £15,675 they had invested – plus a sale price of £24,000.

Progress Gold Mining Company, 1886-96

All plant and the claim held by the defunct Oriental company was bought by a Greymouth businessman, Gerald Perotti, for £320 – less than two years’ wages for a working man in those days.  His attempts to form another company gained no support at first, but the new discovery on the Globe claim near the boundary with the Oriental quickly attracted investors from Greymouth and Reefton.  Perotti took more than 6000 of the 24,000 shares while at the other end of the ledger a Reefton waitress named Annie Lees bought 50.

As expected the new company, named the Progress, located a continuation of the Globe reef which was worked via two adits in Devils Creek near the former Union battery.  From 550m inside the lower tunnel a shaft was sunk four more levels, about 180 metres, using an underground winch driven at first by compressed air and later by steam.  Although the Progress did not enjoy the same spectacular success as the Globe it was steady enough, winning 24,271 ounces of gold and paying £17,400 in dividends before also selling out to Consolidated Goldfields of N.Z.