On June 4th 1861, an Australian prospector named Gabriel
Read wrote to the Superintendent of Otago claiming that after ten hours spent
working with “a butcher’s knife and a tin dish” on the banks of the Tuapeka
River he had obtained seven ounces of gold. His report was met with scepticism, other gold
finds had been reported, none of which had proved to be viable. The Chief Surveyor was despatched to examine ‘Gabriel’s
gully’ and sensationally confirmed that Read and two others (now working with
‘proper’ tools) had gone on to extract nine pounds of gold in a period of
fourteen days.
The first rush had begun.
So many able bodied men left Dunedin that all public works had to be cancelled;
the labour shortage was temporary however.
Within a short period of time Dunedin’s population doubled, and then
trebled, until it became the largest city in New Zealand. Experienced prospectors abandoned Victoria’s
depleted gold fields and travelled East in their thousands. Inexpert prospectors joined them, each man
being confident that with luck and effort they could unearth the fortunes that
lay within Otago’s stony soils. No man could
have expected reward without risk, however gold mining was a rather more
dangerous occupation than most - and inexperienced prospectors soon learned
that there were many ways to die on the goldfields - most were prosaic, while a
few others were entirely unexpected.
In order to expose hidden nuggets of gold it was necessary
to dig out or sluice away soil or gravel. Excavation is a fundamentally
dangerous activity and prospectors who dug, burrowed and drilled into hillsides
or tunnelled beneath the ground died in circumstances that were entirely
predictable. Rock fall, earth fall, landslides and tunnel collapses were among
the more commonly reported causes of fatalities. One particularly unlucky miner was buried in
a collapse that was triggered by an earthquake while a few others were blown to
bits due to “premature detonation of explosives.” Other deaths were attributed
to slightly more unfamiliar mining practices, one man being killed by the “fall
of a bucket” while another was “carried down a sludge channel.” While it seems self-evident, some prospectors
failed to consider that the processes that they used to extract gold, might
also loosen tree roots - a surprising number were crushed to death when large
trees fell on their huts or tents. In
1865 the Marlborough Press reported “an awkward situation” and a lucky
escape. The newspaper described how two
miners who were digging a deep hole in a remote location became trapped when a
large tree unexpectedly fell with a “fearful crash, completely covering the
entrance.” Having “hallooed and coo-eed until they were completely exhausted”
the miners retreated to the bottom of their hole and sat considering “how best
to extricate themselves” when they discovered that water was flooding in and
rising rapidly. With no other option
available, the men “set vigorously to work, and through incessant labour
excavated themselves from their inhospitable prison” which was more than twenty
feet deep.
Goldfield deaths could often be attributed to stupidity or
greed. Men who could not swim drowned
while crossing rivers and poorly equipped prospectors often froze to death in
mountainous terrain. Redeeming
accumulated bullion could also be hazardous, those prospectors who did not
trust their gold to the armed government escorts’ risked robbery and murder on
the return journey to Dunedin. A surprising number of men perished while in “a
state of intoxication,” while others simply had the misfortune to become ill or
injured and died because of a lack of adequate hospital facilities. Suicide
among the unlucky was also quite common.
In May 1862, a ‘Chinaman’ named Sue Kung who was suffering
from incurable syphilis took opium and then hanged himself from a branch
suspended over a hole in the Bendigo diggings.
He left a rather poetic suicide note which was translated and published
verbatim as a “curiosity” by the Bendigo Advertiser. Sue Kung wrote that a man should be “rich and
noble, or poor and low in this life.”
His hopes for health and wealth being ruined he had chosen to “depart
from life in this hole, if I suffer pain once, I will escape from all future
sorrow.” Touchingly, Sue Kung’s last wishes were for his companions to “get the
blessing of Heaven and plenty gold.”
The vast majority of fatalities however, were simply caused
by the environment. 1863 was the
prospectors’ annus horribilus, hundreds
died during the course of this year. It
began in July with a heavy snowfall, followed by unseasonably warm rain. Melted snow flooded mountain streams that fed
Otago’s rivers, violent floods ensued.
In one night the Clutha rose 20ft, the Shotover rose 35ft and the
original settlement of Arrowtown was inundated and destroyed. Dams burst, tents and diggings were swept
away, thousands lost their possession and an unknown number of prospectors were
caught unaware and drowned. Worse was to follow. A month later snow
fell again and continued to fall almost every day throughout August and into
September. Isolated and remote camps
were buried and roads became impassable and then simply disappeared beneath the
snow drifts. Those who chose to stay to
protect their claims against ‘jumpers’ froze or starved as fuel and food ran
out. Those who chose to leave lost
digits or limbs to frostbite while trekking to civilisation. Sergeant Garvey of the Otago Mounted Police
became the second police officer in New Zealand to lose his life in the course
of duty when he died in a blizzard near Ranfurly. Weather conditions did not return to normal
until Christmas. It is likely that
hundreds of prospectors lost their life during the course of that one year,
although final numbers could never be confirmed.
As
1864 began the number of prospectors in Otago peaked and gold miners were beginning
to look towards the West Coast for fresh opportunities. In August that year, four hopeful young
Scotsmen left Dunedin en route to the diggings. Arriving in Waikouaiti, they
bought a tiny tent and provisions for an evening meal then set up camp at Hawksbury
bush. Pitching their tent beneath a
large tree, they lit a fire, cooked their meal, and leaving their fire burning retired
to sleep, side by side in their 8 foot by 6 foot tent. Perhaps they should have known better, but
“being ‘new chums’ they apprehended no danger.”
The tree roots caught fire and in the night the tree fell across their
tent killing the closest man, trapping the next two and narrowly missing the
fourth. The uninjured man was able to drag
his neighbour from the tent, together they ran for help. Passing two or three
farmhouses on the way to the Waikouaiti police camp, they behaved in such “a
frantic manner” that terrified settlers turned them away, not believing their story. When Police Sergeant Burns and his constables
arrived at the campsite they discovered a terrible scene. The tree trunk was four feet in diameter, beneath
it lay a dead man and another who was trapped, crushed and screaming in agony. He remained conscious and suffering
throughout the two or three hours it took to fetch a cross-cut saw and free
him. His condition was hopeless, and
despite “receiving every attention,” death eventually “put an end to his
indescribable agony.” The inquest
returned a verdict of “accidental death caused by the falling of a tree.”
The two
surviving ‘prospective prospectors’ were never named. It
would be nice to know whether they considered themselves to be supremely lucky
and continued on to the goldfields, or if they decided that their recent brush
with death might have exhausted their good fortune and chose to find safer
occupations.
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