To the visitor easily the most interesting object at the Golden Point mine - the pioneer mine, and which may be taken as typical of the three or four other concerns in the neighbourhood - was the magnetic separator for treating the pyrite scheelite.
It is a machine of German construction, and has the distinction of being the only one of its kind in the dominion. The heart of the machine lies in the big 30cwt magnets, which exercise an almost uncanny influence on anything which is sensible to magnetism.
It is situated in a building separated from the battery-house, and is hardly a machine in the true sense of the word. It stands black, silent, and apparently inert, its strength something intangible, and its working invisible.
A watch brought into the room stops immediately; the mine manager's stopped, and had the reporter had one doubtless it would have stopped. A heavy spanner held loosely in the hands near by will move restlessly, and if held nearer still will slip from the grasp and attach itself to the magnet.
Only a strong wrench will drag it away. A bag needle suspended by a string will float towards it and tug like a tethered bird. Mr C. W. Gudgeon, the mine manager, and Mr A. M. Matheson, metallurgist, explained the workings of the machine and of the mine generally, discoursing eloquently and airily of sulphide zones, lines of force, and iron pyrites.
The machine forms the solution to a problem that had long exercised the managerial mind - the problem of how to turn to profitable use the big heaps of by-products left after the gold had been extracted from the quartz.
The Golden Point is situated on Macraes Flat, some three or four miles from the township of Macraes, the flat being really a deep natural basin surrounded on all sides by high hills, which everywhere are pierced by the ''drives'' of the Golden Point and Maritana mines, whose batteries lie within a stone's throw of each other. Scheelite is the main product, but gold is also found in quite payable quantities.
The Golden Point, which has been working for more than 25 years past, was brought to an advanced stage of development by the Donaldson brothers, who, before they disposed of the concern some two years ago to a Christchurch syndicate - the present holders - found ample reward for their long endurance of the climate and the dreary solitude.
• About 60 men are at present employed on the Lawrence-Roxburgh line, their efforts being mainly directed towards pushing on the formation of the line from the Big Hill to Beaumont.
The contract for the formation of a mile from the Big Hill to the bottom of the grade has only been finished, the contractor having been hindered by wet weather.
This means that the formation is done for three miles beyond the tunnel, which leaves only 2 miles of formation to reach the Beaumont station on the Lawrence side of the traffic bridge.
The line has not yet been laid through the tunnel owing to the non-arrival of rails and sleepers.
The bridge over the line on the Beaumont side of Big Hill has been open to traffic for some time, and despite various ominous predictions there has been neither accident nor complaint.
- ODT, 5.7.1913
