CHARLESTON
races and about 11,000 feet of tunnelling, and the average number of men employed was 218.
On 16th February, 1898, Mr. Braddon, the Attorney, notified that the various concerns were working, and that the company was contemplating a further expenditure of £5,000 in lifting the Wareatea water supply, also that “at Bendigo Terrace, Addison’s Flat, extended water supplies had been brought in from Nine-mile, Twelve-mile, and Thirteen-mile Creeks, and that if sufficient inducement offered a supply would be brought from the Ohika River at a cost of from £50,000 to £80,000.”
In addition to tunnelling and water-races there had been constructed 14,000 yards of dam embankments, and the company had used 230,000 sup. feet of timber, 3,120 feet of 18 and 24-inch piping, sunk 5,180 feet of shafts, and built 8,200 square feet of catchment tables. They were using about fifty heads of water and could extend this to one hundred heads or more.
The profit and loss accounts of this company are not available, nor is the date upon which it ceased operations. It is still spoken of on the Coast as “The big German Syndicate”; why, is not known. It is on record that when its coming became known, there was a rush of applications for areas about the district, in the hope that those so obtained would be purchased by the company; perhaps some were.
In 1896 a Warden’s report made reference to the coming of a wealthy syndicate prepared to expend vast sums in the provision of machinery, etc., to work the low-grade deposits of the district, and prophesied the resuscitation of mining on a large scale. The syndicate came, spent much money, but was not long-lived.
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