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Arrowtown Chinese settlement

Arrowtown Chinese Settlement (1869)

Stranded in paradise?

In 1998 George Griffiths and Anthony Ritchie saluted 150 years of organised European settlement in Otago with their musical pageant, From the southern marches. Just before the curtain came down they had the ghost of goldfields balladeer Frederick Thatcher musing about modern Otago. ‘We don't eat proper porridge/Or haggises for tea’, this imitated ‘Inimitable’ sang, ‘it’s dimsims and chapatti/Our New Identity’ – a reference to the term that the Scots Presbyterians used against others, especially English latecomers.

A hundred years ago many would have taken a dim view of the dim sims or anything Chinese. The first ‘Celestials’ reached the goldfields in the mid-1860s, initially recruited by provincial authorities. By 1876 4000 were picking over ground European miners had abandoned (not that that stopped the latter from howling about race contagion). Almost entirely male (only nine of the 5004 Chinese here in 1881 were women), these hardy, mainly Cantonese migrants built their own isolated little communities. Few made enough money to return home triumphantly and most died here old and persecuted. ‘There is about as much distinction between a European and a Chinaman as that between a Chinaman and a monkey’, Premier Richard Seddon once said. A discriminatory poll-tax was not abolished until 1944. It took until 2002 for the New Zealand government to formally apologise to the Chinese community.

Central Otago had several Chinese settlements. Arrowtown’s was studied extensively by archaeologists in the early 1980s and is the best memorial to these settlers. It is now a mixture of stabilised hut ruins, reconstructions and restorations. The most prominent is what is now known as Ah Lum’s Store, once one of several. Market gardener Wong Hop Lee built it about 1883. It got its name from a later occupant, Ah Lum, who bought the building about 1909. It measures just 7.5 by 4.8 m, with local schist providing the walls and floors and corrugated iron the roof. Inside that tiny box, wooden partitions divided off five rooms. The store occupied half the space, some of the goods hanging from the ceiling by hooks and wires. Behind were a bank/office, kitchen and bedrooms, Ah Lum's protected by iron bars (he was also banker to the local Chinese community). Ah Lum died in 1927, one of the last entrepreneurs of an ageing, dying goldfields community.

Further information

This site is item number 37 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

On the ground

Chinatown is professionally interpreted with signboards.

Websites

Books

Julia Bradshaw, Arrowtown: history & walks, University of Otago Press, Dunedin, 2001
James Ng, Windows on a Chinese past, vol. 1, Otago Heritage Books, Dunedin, 1993

Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Main image: Beast from the Bush (Wikimedia)

Other images: 1) and 2) alh1 (Flickr), 3) Albert Freeman (Flickr)

Historic image:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: 1/2-025348-F
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of their images.

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Date established:

1869

Gabriel's Gully

Gabriel’s Gully (1861)

Land that lured the long white crowd

On 8 June 1861 the Otago Witness reported that Gabriel Read had found payable quantities of gold ‘shining like the stars in Orion on a dark frosty night’. It took a while for the penny to drop, but by December perhaps 14,000 people - several times Dunedin’s population - had pitched their tents on the Tuapeka and Waipori fields and staked out their 8 x 8 m claims, 4000-5000 of them at this gully and nearby Wetherstons alone. The first of New Zealand’s three big gold rushes (Otago, Westland and Thames) – and the third of the transformative Pacific rushes (California, Victoria and New Zealand) was on.

Dunedin almost emptied out before new waves of fortune-seekers, the ‘New Iniquity’, swamped the ‘Old Identity’, as the mainly Presbyterian Scottish conservatives called themselves. ‘We cannot resume our Arcadian simplicity: greatness is forced upon us’, the Witness sighed as it and most of its readers happily pocketed the cash. Otago’s population soared by 80% between 1861 and 1864, when Dunedin became our largest city. Read’s fossicking in this undistinguished little gully would also transform New Zealand. It had taken 20 years for New Zealand’s European population to crawl from 2000 to 60,000; in the next 20 it would soar to 470,000, swamping another ‘Old Identity’, Māori New Zealand.

The savage winter of 1862 bested ‘new chums’, driving 7000 of them out for good. The hardy stayers lived a distinctive lifestyle, clad in the goldfields uniform of moleskin pants, blue shirt, wide-awake hat and boots. They spoke a common vernacular, said Erik Olssen, adding wickedly that they ‘appear to have contributed largely to the national skill at swearing’. After the easy pickings were cradled out the big boys moved up the slopes with the stampers and sluicers that would bury the 1860s diggings beneath tens of metres of debris. Large-scale mining petered out early last century, although desperation brought some unemployed back during the depression of the 1930s. Things are quieter at the Gabriel Read Memorial Reserve today, where tourists photograph the ‘pick and shovel’ monument erected for the centennial celebrations in 1961. It is worth taking time to explore further. Follow the loop track that leaves from the car park up Poland’s Hill, down into Munro’s Gully on the far side of Blue Spur and back via the site of the Great Extended Mine Company’s mine. There is plenty to see here and at the goldfields museum down the road in Lawrence.

Further information

This site is item number 27 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

On the ground

The site’s features are clearly marked.

Websites

Books

Tom Field and Erik Olssen, Relics of the goldfields: Central Otago, John McIndoe, Dunedin, 1976
John Hall-Jones, Goldfields of Otago: an illustrated history, with supplement, Craigs, Invercargill, 2012 edition

Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Contemporary images: Jock Phillips

Historic images:

Alexander Turnbull Library
References: 1/2-096648-F (photographed by Harry C. Gore), 1/2-031007-F and PA7-45-08 (photographed by Herbert Deveril)
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of their images.

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1861

Provincial Hotel

Provincial Hotel, Dunedin (1859)

Staging post for the ‘New Iniquity’

‘Go on in the old fashion/And ne’er improve the town/And still on all new comers/Keep up a fearful down.’ So sang the most popular balladeer of Dunedin’s bustling, booming gold-rush heyday, ‘The Inimitable’ Charles Thatcher. He was, of course, lampooning the self-appointed old guard, the Scots Presbyterian ‘Old Identity’ that feared being swamped by the thousands of hard-working, hard-drinking miners - the 'New Iniquity' - who flooded into the province.

As a glance around Dunedin’s numerous historic pubs shows, it was no contest. Twenty-first-century Dunedinites point proudly to, among others, the former Wain’s Hotel, with its exuberant gargoyles, the Grand Hotel section of the Southern Cross, the Albert Arms (now sadly, the Bog Irish Bar) and the Captain Cook, beloved of generations of students, where the last pints were poured in mid-2013. But the most interesting of all lurks at the foot of Stafford Street, in the tatty southern end of the central business district. Here, unregistered, unlisted but reeking as much of history as beer and stale tobacco, is the Provincial, for four unforgettable years the commercial base of Shadrach Jones.

The Provincial is Dunedin’s oldest watering hole still on (part of) its original site. It opened in 1859 as Sibbald’s Hotel and became the Provincial a year later under new owners. In 1861 they sold their hotel to the extraordinary Shadrach Jones. Sometimes called New Zealand’s first real theatrical entrepreneur, Jones had dropped medicine for minerals. Restless and mercurial, with a ‘chequerboard waistcoat, fat cigar, lavish jewellery and bulldog at heel,’ he added the Princess Theatre to the hotel. Jones added another theatre to the Commercial Hotel, ran a horse bazaar and saleyards and had his pudgy fingers in all sorts of commercial pies until he was forced to retrench in 1864 after losing money bringing an English cricket team over from Australia.

Through it all the Provincial prospered. ‘When Jones took over the Provincial … business merely hummed. Jones soon had it throbbing’, James McNeish wrote. He turned it into the depot and booking office for the Cobb & Co. coaches running between Dunedin and Gabriel’s Gully. It was rough, boisterous and for Jones highly profitable. Clubs, societies and sporting bodies met here and on one memorable night two groups gathered, one to form a fire brigade, the other a jockey club.

The Provincial was never the same after Jones and no longer stretches to the intersection of Stafford, Princes and Manse streets. But there is life in it still. In the 1960s its laundry and tank rooms became ‘the Cellars Bar’, where old bricks adorned with the names of previous patrons decorated the arches; it is still a venue for live music. In 1976, the gaudily painted pub became a tavern. It still offers you the opportunity to raise a glass, though these days the patrons are more likely to be backpackers than wannabe gold miners.

Further information

This site is item number 25 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

Websites

Books

James McNeish, Tavern in the town, A.H. & A.W. Reed, Wellington, 1984
Frank Tod, Pubs galore, Historical Publications, Dunedin, 1984

Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Image: Gavin McLean, 2001

BY-SA

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1859

First major gold rush in Otago starts

The Otago provincial government had offered a £1000 reward for the discovery of ‘payable quantities’ of gold. A Tasmanian, Gabriel Read, claimed the reward (equivalent to more than $100,000 in 2013) after finding gold ‘shining like the stars in Orion on a dark, frosty night’ near the Tuapeka River, a tributary of the Clutha. His discovery sparked the country’s first major gold rush.

Thousands of diggers rushed to ‘Gabriel’s Gully’ hoping to strike it rich. A slice of the goldfields population of Victoria moved across the Tasman − not only miners, but also businesspeople and entertainers. The discovery was a major economic boost to both Otago province and the wider New Zealand economy. But there were fears that criminal elements seeking potentially rich pickings would also flock to the goldfields.

Image: Gabriel Read (DNZB)

NZ’s heaviest ever gold nugget discovered

‘Messrs Scott and Sharpe’ found the heaviest gold nugget on record in New Zealand at Ross on the West Coast in 1909. Weighing in at a hefty 2.81 kg (99 ounces), the nugget was named the ‘Honourable Roddy’ after the Minister of Mines, Roderick McKenzie.

The nugget was bought for £400 by a Ross storekeeper and his Canterbury associate. A cast of it was soon on show in the Canterbury Museum. In 1911 the ‘Honourable Roddy’ was bought by the government. Mounted in a ‘fitting setting’, it became New Zealand’s ‘decidedly handsome’ Coronation gift to King George V. When enquiries were made 40 years later, it was discovered that the nugget had been melted down to make a royal tea service.

As impressive as the Honourable Roddy was, it failed to compare with the world’s largest gold nugget, the ‘Welcome Stranger’ nugget found at Moliagul, Victoria, Australia, in 1869. John Deason and Richard Oates’ discovery weighed a staggering 78 kg.

In September 2011 gold was selling for about NZ$2000 an ounce, so the Honourable Roddy would be worth close to $200,000 today.

Image: The Gold Room.

Australian gold rush migrants

Following the discovery of gold at Gabriels Gully in Otago (1861), thousands of miners left Australia’s main goldfields in Victoria to try their luck in the South Island. Further discoveries were made at Wakamarina in Marlborough (1864) and at Greenstone Creek on the West Coast (1864). Between 1861 and 1867 there were 50,000 new arrivals from Australia. Many left as the rush slowed but over 11,000 stayed. A number of these arrivals became prominent New Zealanders, including future premiers Julius Vogel and Richard Seddon. Strongly independent with a firm sense of democracy, the Australian gold miners had a long-term impact on New Zealand’s political culture.

Some were less desirable additions to the New Zealand population. Richard Burgess and one-time prison mate Henry Garrett were the sort of men some feared would join the mass exodus to the Otago goldfields. St John Branigan, the head of the fledgling Otago police force, warned that such men would be attracted to Otago not just because of the promise of rich pickings from the goldfields but from the pockets of unsuspecting miners. As a recruit from the Victorian police Branigan had 'seen it all before'.

At one point Hokitika was described as ‘a suburb of Melbourne’, such was the level of migration from the Victorian goldfields. Burgess and his associates followed this well-beaten path from Victoria to Otago and then on to the other South Island fields. Upon their release from Dunedin gaol in 1865 Burgess and Kelly headed straight for the West Coast and it was in Hokitika that the final members of the Burgess gang – Levy and Sullivan – were recruited. Burgess had known Levy from his time in Victoria, where Levy worked as a gold buyer and 'fence' (someone who sells stolen goods). Sullivan had also lived in Victoria prior coming to New Zealand.

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: J-040-004
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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The Maungatapu murders virtual comic

Virtual comic book telling the story of the Maungatapu murders committed by the Burgess gang in 1866. Click on image to open up the comic book.

Text by Norman Bilbrough
Images by James Findlater
Produced by the NZHistory.net.nz team

© Ministry for Culture and Heritage

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Waiuta in 2008

Waiuta in 2008 – a view over part of the historic reserve. Chimneys and concrete foundations are the main relics of the community that previously lived here.

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Photographer: Simon Nathan

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Queen carnival at Waiuta

The 1931 Waiuta jubilee celebrations had an extended prelude in the form of a Queen Carnival, with local organisations competing to see which could raise the most money and have their queen crowned on the big day. That honour went to Hester Nitschke, representing the king of local sports, rugby league. Funds went to building local facilities, including a swimming pool which can still be seen at Waiuta. Having ‘HRH’ and her entourage pose in front of the mine buildings no doubt appealed to the photographer's eye for the paradoxical.

Credit:

Photographer: Joseph Divis
Friends of Waiuta

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Waiuta jubilee

Whether they came from along the road or far away, everybody attending Waiuta’s 1931 jubilee strictly observed the dress code of the day. They included Tony Anisy, in the front centre with moustache and wing collar, a familiar figure in the town's earliest days, when trudged the muddy streets hawking goods from a large portmanteau. This was one of those rare times when Divis looked as if he had only just beaten the shutter timer in his bid to be in the photo.

Credit:

Photographer: Joseph Divis
Brendon Wilshire collection (copyright)

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