The waterwheel was an engineering marvel in itself as the following figures show:

Wheel	Approximately 20 metres in diameter with 64 spokes of 20cm by 15cm timber more than 9 metres long
Steel axle	The steel axle of the wheel was approximately 35cm in diameter and 4 metres long, weighing more than 18 tonnes
Horse power	The horse power generated by the wheel was 275 hp to drive two 50-head ore crushing stamps, each weighing about half a tonne
Weight	The wheel weighed approximately 10 tonnes

Many streams were used to provide sufficient water to drive the wheel but even so during the dry summers, there was barely enough to keep the wheel operating.

The photograph below shows the part of the mine called the tin dressing shed. The large circular tub in the foreground was known as a buddle, which provided one way of treating the crushed ore to extract fine tin. The buddle, which revolved to carry out the above process, is shown incomplete here (a buddle in working order is shown behind this one, with long wooden arms). To the right of the picture is a wilfrey table, which was another way of separating tin-bearing material. It was made from strips of wood and sloped slightly from top to bottom. Material containing tin was introduced at the top of the table along with water, and the table shaken mechanically. The heavier material (ie: the tin), settled out at the base of the table whilost the lighter deposits remained at the top.

In some parts of the Anchor mine, tin was found at a depth of over sixty metres. The stampers were each capable of crushing three tonnes of ore every 24 hours, and the men who worked the mine each earned from £1 to £9 fortnightly (up to about $20 each). Till about the end of the century, some 18,000 tonnes of stone was treated which produced over 62 tonnes of tin ore worth £4,464 (over $8,000). The best results however, were obtained in the period of 1906-7 when with a continuous water supply, over 150,000 tonnes of stone was crushed for a return of about 225 tonnes of tin. The tin production at that period of the workings was worth about £17,000 ($34,000).

Although the mine was revived after the second world war, it closed down again in about 1948. Today, little evidence remains of one of Tasmania's most famous tin mines.

Footnote: The mine had been worked on a very small scale during the 1990s by Spectrum Resources and Mancala Pty Ltd. The Mineralogical Society of Tasmania has visited the mine on two occasions, the first in 1996, when there was an unsuccessful attempt at locating the famous "big wheel", and a second time in 1998 after mining operations had once more been halted. A separate article is planned for this site soon.