Gold in Lawrence - a brief history
Gold was discovered in May 1861 by Gabriel Read, close to where the Pick and Shovel monument now stands. The ‘Goldrush’ began almost immediately. By the end of 1861 there were 11,500 miners living in the ‘Gully’ and almost as many again, scattered around Blue Spur, Munroe’s Gully, Weatherstons, and Waitahuna. They mostly lived in canvas tents and endured harsh and primitive conditions. The registered claims were 24ft x 24ft.
In 1861 gold was valued at $3-10 Shillings per ounce. Miners made anything from $9, to $90 per day. At that time, a shepherd earned $40-$50 per year!
The gold lay 1 1/2 metres down on a pan of blue slate rock. The only equipment needed was a pick and a shovel, and a gold pan or cradle with a plentiful supply of water to separate the gold from the wash dirt. It wasn’t long before the surface diggings were worked out and by 1863 more sophisticated methods were employed to extract the gold from greater depths from the hills.
Other methods required vast amounts of water, so with only picks and shovels, water races were constructed to carry water from the head-water of the Beaumont and Waipori Rivers and later Reedy Creek. Water was brought from the Tokomairiro head-waters to the Waitahuna goldfields.
In total there were 376 kilometres of water races constructed to Gabriel’s Gully, 295 kilometres to Waitahuna and 180 kilometres constructed to Waipori. The water races were gravity fed and to provide a continuous flow of water over these distances, demanded skill and precision in their construction.
The races fed overnight into a series of holding dams dotted around the area, from where the water was drawn off throughout the day for high pressure sluicing and excavating operations.
Pollards Pond on the Goldfields loop track and Cornishman’s Dam on the Munroe’s Gully track are two examples. Many of these dams, which still hold water today, are good local fishing spots and the water supply in Lawrence is fed by some of those original races. The water races had to be constantly checked and kept free of any debris. This was the job of the ‘raceman’. The raceman usually lived isolated life, far up in the hills.
From 1865, blasting powder was used to break down the soft rock in an open-cast method. It was tossed into a sluicing channel and the gold was separated and trapped on ‘riffles’ in a sluice boxes.
This method was found to be too slow and uneconomic, which led to the introduction of stamping batteries in 1872 when a quartz reef was discovered on the south-west side of Gabriel’s Gully. Many tunnels were driven into the reef and the remains of both the tunnels, and stamping equipment and can be seen while walking along the Goldfields loop track.
At one time there were seven stamping batteries operating around Gabriel’s Gully and Blue Spur. They could crush up to 10 tonnes of ‘cement’ per day. Some of them had up to 20 stamping heads. Try to imagine the noise echoing around the ‘Gully’.
The creek–bed in Gabriel’s Gully was raised 60cms a week with all the tailings and is now 50meters above its original level. Before all the excavating began, what we know as Blue Spur and neighbouring Pollards Hills, were both part of the same hill. The central part of it was blasted and sluiced away.
The build-up of tailings reduced the fall of water required for the sluices. Around 1878, hydraulic elevating was introduced to solve this problem. These huge constructions involved breaking the gravel banks down under high water pressure, then using a vacuum, created by the design of the apparatus, to suck gravel boulders and water, up to a higher level for processing.
There were three elevators working, the biggest of which raised materiel a little over 20metres. From the three elevators, gold saving sluices ran out for distances of 247, 263 and 234 meters.
Blue Spur and Munroe’s Gully both became settlements with populations around 500. The schools in both areas were closed around 1925.
Weatherstons over the hill had a similar sized population of mostly single men. Weatherstons was noted not only for its several ‘houses of ill repute’ but also for the well known Harts Brewery which closed down in 1923. A hillside of daffodils planted at the old brewery is a local attraction each spring.
A steady flow of Chinese came after the main Goldrush. They worked long, hard hours on tailings that had already been well worked over, and lived in a primitive and frugal conditions. They were prohibited by local body by-law from settling in the existing town and as a result several Chinese camps sprung up on the outskirts of the towns boundaries. Many eventually returned to China, although a few Chinese graves can be seen in one corner of the Lawrence cemetery. Two well known Chinese who remained working in the area were the hotel keeper Sam Chew Lin in Lawrence, and ‘Cranky Joe’ the old hermit miner in Waitahuna.
Although many miners made fortunes, many others returned to their homelands disappointed. A few of the established farmers became wealthy supplying the goldfields with produce and had ready money to import the best equipment to set up model farms. They built large homesteads, and employed architects to build schools and churches. They drained and cleared the land and created new farms on highly productive land.
The peak of the gold boom was reached in 1862, about the time the town of Lawrence was established. It grew rapidly in the next 10 years. Many of the buildings constructed then, are still in use today.
In 1862, (just one year) 200,000 oz of gold was taken out of Gabriel’s Gully. In 1985, when gold prices were at an all time high, this amount would have worth $160 million!!! Gold production creased around 1930. Its discovery had established Lawrence, Dunedin, Otago and indirectly the whole of New Zealand.