Latitude & Longitude (WGS84):	37° 10' 0'' South , 175° 41' 56'' East
Latitude & Longitude (decimal):	-37.16672,175.69895
GeoHash:	G#: rckuw4h04
Köppen climate type:	Cfb : Temperate oceanic climate

John Neve discovered gold here in 1875. There has been some dispute over the name spelling. The Wardens Court in various papers spell his name Neve, and the site was known as Nevesville until the 1930's, when for some inexplicable reason the name was changed to Neavesville, which has generally been used since.

The site is two kilometres south of State Highway 25A, 15 kilometres east of Kopu. Access is by a four wheel drive (or walking) track leaving the highway, or can be accessed by a road in a similar state of disrepair heading east of Puriri. Various mining exploration tracks cross the area, which is now densely forested and scrub covered hills. Remains of the Bird battery still exists, swallowed by the forest, and un-marked, with no access.

After the gold discovery several company mines were developed in the late 19th century, but these gradually faded until in the 1930's the town consisted of a very basic hotel, and a dozen humpies where men eked out a living gum resin digging on Mullocky Flat. The site also contained a ten stamp battery which had been abandoned before it conducted any crushing when the gas suction engine failed. In the 1930's Bill Havill, Martin Grace, his brother Perry Grace, Harry Morgan, and his son got the old battery working crushing stacked ore from previous mining ventures, and driving on a small leader. The mine was taken over by John McCoy from Auckland, but it is thought be the end of the 1930's mining had ceased, and the forest gradually swallowed the site.

This is probably the same battery that was removed in the 1960's to the Thames Gold Experience tourist attraction at Thames. After fifty years of volunteer work, the battery was re-assembled and restored to an operating condition to demonstrate to tourists.

The area has been covered by mining exploration leases for several decades. Various companies explored across the 1980's and 1990's. In 2012 Eurasian Minerals took over the area, shortly after merging with White Rock Minerals to become E2 Metals. Over the years there have been options for sale to other companies, and joint exploration ventures. Sixty-nine drill holes, some rock chip sampling, reviews of past historic data, and 3D computer geological wireframe modelling has produced an Inferred JORC compliant resource of 1 489 500 tonnes of ore for 123 600 ounces of gold at 2.58 g/t, and 509 100 ounces of silver at 9.69 g/t, at least indicating the ore has a high silver content over gold (cut-off Au 0.7 g/t). The output of the goldfield until the 1930's was around 29 000 ounces.

An attractive daffodil is named after Neavesville, the North Island man who developed it, John McLennan naming it for the gold mining area his grandfather worked in.

The country rock is andesite, rhyolite pyroclastics, intrusive silicified breccia, and pyritic black shale, capped by tuff. The deposits are located in a one kilometre wide north north-east trending graben structure. The rift is filled by rhyolite pyroclastics and sedimentary rocks, intruded by elongate breccia lodes consisting of a clay-pyrite-carbonate altered matrix, supporting clasts of andesite, carbonaceous shale, and rhyolitic tuff.

The near surface is hydrothermally altered to quartz, adularia, kaolinite, illite and smectite, graduating at depth to quartz, adularia, kaolinite, chlorite, illite, and sericite.

Epithermal gold-silver is found particularly around the breccia margins, beneath the shale beds, and along fault structures, especially where north-west trending cross structures intersect the major north-north-east trending structues. Ore is found as pyrite and electrum in carbonaceous shale, in veins and fractures; or as electrum in cockscomb quartz vein stock works in brittle silicified rocks; or as electrum in epithermal veins; or as secondary enriched electrum. Trace chalcopyrite is found in quartz veins at depth, associated with molybdenum.

Mineral List

Mineral list contains entries from the region specified including sub-localities

7 valid minerals.

Rock Types Recorded

Rock list contains entries from the region specified including sub-localities

Regional Geology

This geological map and associated information on rock units at or nearby to the coordinates given for this locality is based on relatively small scale geological maps provided by various national Geological Surveys. This does not necessarily represent the complete geology at this locality but it gives a background for the region in which it is found.

Click on geological units on the map for more information. Click here to view full-screen map on Macrostrat.org

Quaternary 0 - 2.588 Ma ID: 3187411	Cenozoic volcanic rocks Age: Pleistocene (0 - 2.588 Ma) Lithology: Ignimbrite(s); felsic volcanic rocks; rhyolite Reference: Chorlton, L.B. Generalized geology of the world: bedrock domains and major faults in GIS format: a small-scale world geology map with an extended geological attribute database. doi: 10.4095/223767. Geological Survey of Canada, Open File 5529. [154]
Pliocene - Late Miocene 2.588 - 11.62 Ma ID: 1308439	Whitianga Group rhyolite lava and related deposits Age: Neogene (2.588 - 11.62 Ma) Stratigraphic Name: Whitianga Group Description: Rhyolite lavas and dome complexes with associated breccia and tuff; minor obsidian and intense hydrothermal alteration locally. Comments: Zealandia Megasequence Extrusive and Intrusive Rocks (Neogene) Lithology: Rhyolite, breccia, tuffite Reference: Edbrooke, S.W., Heron, D.W., Forsyth, P.J., Jongens, R. (compilers). Geology Map of New Zealand 1:1 000 000. GNS Science Geological Map 2. [12]
Messinian - Tortonian 5.333 - 11.62 Ma ID: 1358737	Coroglen Subgroup ignimbrite (Whitianga Group) of Coromandel Volcanic Zone Age: Miocene (5.333 - 11.62 Ma) Stratigraphic Name: Coroglen Subgroup Description: Ignimbrite flow sheets and local rhyolitic and obsidian-rich pumice breccia deposits and tuff. Comments: Neogene igneous rocks. Age based on K-Ar and FT Lithology: Major:: {ignimbrite},Minor:: {rhyolite, tuff, breccia} Reference: Heron, D.W. . Geology Map of New Zealand 1:250 000. GNS Science Geological Map 1. [13]

Data and map coding provided by Macrostrat.org, used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License

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