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Parkside Quarry – home of Ōamaru Stone

The tour takes approximately one hour. Your guide, Judy Mitchell-Oats – a 5th generation family member to be involved with the quarry, will take you through our massive open-air quarry pits, then the factory, to experience where and how limestone is mined and learn more about our history.

The tour is a special experience and in the huge quarry pits, you get a sense of drama from being surrounded by limestone.

We also have a Museum where you can delve into our history further.

Extracting the limestone

In the early days, limestone blocks were extracted in the quarry by using hand tools such as axes and chisels – it would have been a successful day if they cut two 2-ton blocks in a day. Now we expect to cut 600 2-ton blocks, on a good day! We have some old equipment on display, and our impressive fleet of modern heavy machinery includes a state of the art 5-axis CNC saw – the largest of its kind, in New Zealand. The CNC saw allows us to custom cut, carve and shape Ōamaru Stone to almost any size, shape and design.