Nice. I wonder if there's a Google map reference for the exact place? I've only been to the southern bit of Coromandel, which is nondescript hilly sheep country, no old mine workings.

NZ literature does that sort of nostalgia very well. The classic is Denis Glover's "Arawata Bill" poem cycle, which you might summarize as being about the discovery of nature through chasing the delusion of gold.