Skip to main content

Story: Hauraki–Coromandel region

New Year in Grahamstown, Thames, 1880s

Image
New Year in Grahamstown, Thames, 1880s

This Christmas and New Year card produced by the firm of A. D. Willis of Whanganui depicted the industrial side of the Thames goldfield, around 20 years after it had first been worked. In the factories shown here in the Grahamstown part of Thames, quartz was crushed to extract the gold within. Foundries manufactured the quartz-crushing equipment. By this time yields from the Thames field were falling; it was soon to be displaced by Waihī as the centre of Coromandel mining.

Using this item

Alexander Turnbull Library

Reference: E-068-017-2

by Archibald Dudingston Willis

Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

All images & media in this story

How to cite this page

Paul Monin, Hauraki–Coromandel region – Gold mining, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/ephemera/30410/new-year-in-grahamstown-thames-1880s (accessed 4 June 2026).

Story by Paul Monin, published 13 December 2010, updated 1 April 2016.