The Year 11 Social Sciences course is a new subject for 2024. With the freedom created around dropping Level one NCEA in 2024, we were able to combine aspects of Geography and History to offer a course focused on the topic of Gold in New Zealand.
With local History being important to the revised Social Sciences curriculum, we wanted to build a course that was relevant to our akonga. Gold is important to the history of our local area and still plays a significant role in our local economy. On Tuesday, 2nd July, we were fortunate to visit the Winding Creek Mine, run by Rosco Contracting. They allowed us to visit so we could get a look at a functioning mine in the modern era. We were very lucky, as ‘time is money’ in the mining game, and we are very grateful that Hayden Blacktop, the mine's Boss, took the time to show us around. After that, we toured the Waikaia Museum, which is an amazing facility that again has one-of-a-kind exhibits related to the gold mining industry in our area. The exhibit on the Chinese miners that worked the same area as the modern mine was a real highlight. Again, we are very grateful to Mairi Dickson, who opened the museum especially for us to look around.
The students really enjoyed seeing the parallels between historical mining and modern mining 150 years later.
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