Before moving on, I think this might be a good place to talk about New Zealand’s Gold Rush.
Gold was discovered in Otago, New Zealand, in 1861. Within a few years, the population tripled. It wasn’t just prospectors hoping to find their fortunes. Prospectors need food and supplies, means of transportation, care for their animals.
For every gold-seeker, there are two, three, or more people who make their fortunes serving the needs of the prospectors...and maybe ripping them off every now and then. Every story of a gold rush goes with stories of honest business people developing new settlements, of growing communities and increasing populations that did not depend on gold mining.
There’s nothing easy about mining gold to get rich. Stories of gold rushes always go with stories of con artists taking advantage of the naive, of those who would kill for the claim they didn’t stake, of those who died because of the claim they made.
Like the gold rushes in Alaska, California and elsewhere, entrepreneurs followed the adventurous. Much of New Zealand’s development took place because of the gold rush. William Larnach, Australian banker and businessman, was offered the position of manager of the Bank of Otago in Dunedin, which serviced the extensive goldfields. And off he went in 1867 to make his fortune from those seeking their own.
Naturally, our tour has a chance to experience first hand a very tame version of what the gold-seekers may have done. During one of our stops along a fairly tame creek, we do pan for gold. That is, we take fine sieves down to the edge of a creek and basically ‘dip and sift’.
The kind of gold that is in these waters would once have been in rocks gradually worn away by sand and water. After millennia of erosion, the gold flecks can be sifted out of the water’s sediment.
Gary and I don’t expect much, but we can’t resist the chance to try panning for gold. This is a lot easier than trying to climb a northern Alaskan mountain in bitter chill to get to a gold field .... so off Gary and I go to the edge of the water.
Panning for Gold*
If either of us could have found the photo of me and Gary, I would have shown it. Honest.
I think this is the high point of Kate’s day. I say with no regret that although I know Kate mischievously took photos of us, neither of us can find them. I also took a photo, of no one we know. That’s Kate in the foreground, standing tall and calm, and that is someone caught panning for gold in a pose in which neither Gary nor I want to be remembered.
For the record, we also found no gold.
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If you’re interested in panning for gold in NZ, or in more information on the New Zealand Gold Rush, check these sites:
Next: Penguin Place Conservation Reserve
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