The hill behind

S' mother is improving; indeed she has been able to be on her own overnight again. So that is a relief.

Today S and I drove to Tauranga for me to attend a funeral following an unexpected death. The route took us through Waikino, at the southeastern end of the Karangahake Gorge. On the way back to Auckland we stopped and I went on a brief photo shoot by myself on the site of the Victoria Battery. As can be seen from this 1910 photograph which is displayed on the site, it was a large complex. There are numerous homes behind the battery, and the main township was the other way; behind the sign.

Past the right hand edge of the sign is a glimpse of the main road (State Highway 2). Behind the distant tall trees on the right was the Waikino School. The school I attended until my father sold his farm when I was 11. That hill was where the 1910 photo was taken from. When I was at school there, we could see the ruins of the battery from the highest point of the playing fields.

The cyanide agitation tanks in the foreground were apparently a New Zealand invention to get the maximum amount of gold out of the rock which had been crushed elsewhere in the battery. All that is left now are the arches of concrete , and the rusted remains of some of the 15 m tall tanks which contained the cyanide.

This photo was my pick (and also S') to blip. I will come back soon and post a selection of others on my blipfolio. If you look at it large, you can read a little about the original 1910 photograph.

The whole reason that the Victoria Battery existed was to extract gold from stone, which is the challenge word for this week #50

LATE ADDITION:

I liked the collection I got while at the site of the Victoria Battery. I have therefore put a selection of 8 into my blipfolio. In a category called Waikino
The railway station
Muscovy duck and drake
The old railway bridge
The concrete arches
Two welcome swallows
The base for the cyanide extraction cylinders
Ohinemuri River
Red flax flowers