Tuesday, 3 March 2015

A Risky Business

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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