In the South Pacific Ocean lies New Zealand - an oasis of beauty, culture, and knowledge. Of the two main islands, the larger South Island is a wonderland of scenic beauty and charm. And sitting in the south eastern coast at the head of Otago's natural harbour, is the City of Dunedin with ocean beaches to its east, and to the west, a hinterland of hills and valleys that stretch to New Zealand 's Southern Alps .

Dunedin 's dramatic bush-covered hills form the basin of a long natural harbour, which attracted Maori settlers to the site in the 14th century. The principal tribe and Te iwi Kaitiaki o Te Wai Pounamu is Kai Tahu, the guardians of the South Island and the people of the land.

European settlement began in the 1830s. Whaling formed the focus for European activity along Otago's coastline and involved many nationalities. Over the centuries, diverse cultures have established themselves here including Asian, Lebanese and Pacific Island communities.

Our architectural heritage can be traced to the original Scottish founders and through the prosperous gold rush days of the 19th century, providing a cityscape of fine Edwardian and Victorian architecture. In 1848, Scottish migrants established a town here, giving it the ancient Gaelic name for Edinburgh - Dunedin. Thirteen years later gold was discovered 120 kilometres inland in Central Otago and the small settlement of Dunedin became the commercial centre of the nation.

Dunedin's Golden History

On a late autumn evening in 1861, when the infant village of Dunedin was at its evening meal and the dark already falling, a lone Australian prospector stopped to try his luck at a small creek 70km away as the crow flies.

The man was Gabriel Read. The place, a few kilometres from modern Lawrence. The date, the 20th (some say the 23rd) of May. Shovelling away more than half a metre of gravel and reaching the slate bed of the creek, Read found, in his famous phrase, "gold shining like the stars of Orion on a dark, frosty night". By the time he had panned out the first shovelsful and with darkness already upon him, he had to stumble back to his tent to strike a light and see the rich residue of gold gleaming in the dish.
THE RUSH HAD A SLOW START...

After several more days of prospecting, Read was convinced that he had discovered a major goldfield. He reported his find to the authorities who in turn passed the news on to the Otago Witness. It didn't have the effect you might expect. There'd already been half a dozen supposed goldfields discovered, and none had come to anything. Besides, the Presbyterian Scots who made up the bulk of the small settlement were highly suspicious of anything that smacked of easy money. Back in 1851, the Witness had bluntly warned its readers, "Flour is more necessary than gold and may be more profitable".

So, with this initial scepticism, no more than 150 men were at work on the diggings in the first month. But spectacular returns had their effect and by August 'gold fever' had taken hold. News spread, diggers began to pour over from Australia, and the village of Dunedin suddenly found itself in the forefront of an international goldrush. On one single day, 65 vessels were counted at anchor in the Otago Harbour. People awoke to see empty hillsides suddenly covered with white tents.

Followed by a population explosion

The Tuapeka wilderness was soon supporting 11,500 diggers. Dunedin, as port of entry, doubled to 5,850 in six months, trebled again within three years, and by 1870 was unchallenged as New Zealand's largest and richest city. Scots leaders who bemoaned the loss of the settlement's 'old identity' were ridiculed in the clever satirical songs of Charles Thatcher.

While the growing city of Dunedin certainly suffered from absurdly soaring land values, disastrous sanitation problems and burgeoning crime, it also enjoyed unimagined benefits from its sudden and unexpected wealth: the finest architecture in New Zealand, the first daily newspaper, and even the celebrated (and notorious) Vauxhall pleasure gardens.

A SECOND WAVE OF MINERS

The rushes themselves ebbed and flowed. Gabriels Gully was followed, after a lull, by spectacular discoveries further upstream on the Clutha River, then on its more distant Shotover and Arrow tributaries, and ultimately across the whole of inland Otago.

When fresh rushes on the West Coast threatened to draw away many European miners, the authorities in Dunedin countered by inviting Chinese diggers to cross the Tasman from Victoria and work the Otago fields under the guaranteed protection of the Otago Provincial Council.

The Chinese made a considerable contribution to the province's ongoing prosperity, not only from their ability to recover additional gold from worked-over claims, but also from their skill in discovering and developing new fields. They reached a population of around 5,000 in Otago-Southland, and at some diggings outnumbered the Europeans. Chinese merchants and suppliers made Dunedin the headquarters not only for the Otago trade but for dealings throughout New Zealand. Since eight is the Chinese lucky number, the eight-sided Octagon made Dunedin an exceptionally lucky city.

SHORT TERM BENEFITS PROVE LONG-LASTING

Southland's short-lived attempt to break away from Otago did not materially affect the long-term benefits Dunedin obtained from the gold. In those days of autonomous provincial government, all the best fields lay within the authority of the Otago Province, which benefited considerably from levies on the miners and an export duty on their gold. In the 1860s particularly, Dunedin saw the best that was going in touring entertainment and high-class sport.

Even so, flour did perhaps eventually prove itself more durable than gold. As the rushes reached their climax and dropped away, thousands of those who had been drawn to the province stayed on to invest their energies in agriculture. This, together with railway development in the 1870's, enabled Otago to enjoy continued economic leadership. It had a well-organised police force, an excellent postal system, a network of established goldfield and rural towns, good consumer demand for its crops, the first university in New Zealand, and a surprisingly strong capacity in engineering and shipping.

International recognition for Dunedin expertise

Famous firms such as National Mortgage, Wright Stephenson, Perpetual Trustees and Wise's Directories, originally founded in Dunedin in the golden years, became the head offices of nation-wide enterprises. Wise's, for instance, not only produced directories for every city in New Zealand, but for some in Australia as well.
The Mining School, inaugurated by the University of Otago, provided expertise in geology, mining engineering and metallurgy and the later gold discoveries at Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia made considerable use of Otago mining skill and financial investment.

DREDGING BOOM CREATES NEW INDUSTRY

As Otago's own ready-to-hand alluvial gold gave way to deep-level hydraulic elevating, quartz mining, and dredging, Dunedin's manufacturing capacity to produce the required machinery became even stronger. A breakthrough in dredging in the 1890s, led by noted Chinese entrepreneur Sew Hoy, made it possible for large-scale mining to be carried out on the river-flats for the first time, a new generation of paddock dredges taking their pools of water with them as they chewed through the gravelly, gold-impregnated land.
It is difficult to imagine the mania that accompanied the dredging boom, the second golden explosion Dunedin and Otago experienced in three decades. Every engineering shop in the province built dredges. Even the cautious invested money in the innumerable companies who ran them: the incautious too often lost their life savings. Maps told investors where the dozens of dredges, with their seductive romantic names, were at work on the Otago rivers. Shares changed hands as fast as the telegraph could chatter out the ever-rising quotations.

Gold followed by other industries

When the boom inevitably burst, Dunedin still had plenty for which to thank Otago gold. The first New Zealand shipment of refrigerated meat for Britain, exported through Port Chalmers in 1882, ensured the expansion of innumerable freezing works. Butter and cheese could now be refrigerated too, and the stainless steel fittings needed in large quantities for this new export industry gave new work to Dunedin's established metalworkers. So, too, did the expansion of the Dunedin-founded Union Steamship Company, which became the biggest shipping line in the Southern Hemisphere.

It was the loss of shipping, even more than the decreasing yields of available ore, that spelt the end of Dunedin's first golden age and saw economic and technical leadership move north. For 80 years, Otago Harbour had been first port of call for British and European shipping on the Atlantic route and, although the Suez Canal had already offered other options, it was the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 which ended the colonial era and focused incoming shipping on Auckland.

A THIRD WAVE OF GOLD FEVER

Otago's gold production tailed away, and though gold prices in the 1930 Depression were sufficient to rekindle scattered mining throughout the province as an alternative to unemployment, the industry just limped along for over half a century. With the end of World War II even the dredging days ended, the huge Lowburn dredge built on the eve of the war becoming nothing more than a monument to past glories.

But even the past glories have created something of an industry, giving Dunedin and its province an historical magic that never seems to fade. The old mining relics, schist hotels, tales of rascality and derring-do, great waterwheels and abandoned stampers, bus tours and panning operations, the innumerable books...

Then, quite suddenly, especially in the 1980s, it all came to life again. Better gold prices and the development of powerful equipment which could at last deal profitably with low-yielding soils using large-scale methods beyond the technology and resources of the 19th century.

Now, less than an hour's drive from Dunedin, you can see the massive mining operations  at Macraes and, further afield, famous old names like Teviot, Nokomai and Wakatipu are once again the scene of active mining. There are plenty of weekend prospectors, too, from 'new chums' trying to raise the colour by panning, to the more serious, operating their own portable, power-driven machinery and often earning good pickings.

See the past and the present

The i-SITE Dunedin Visitor's Centre has information on tours to the Macraes mine, as well as an excellent brochure and map on the many goldfield activities in inland Otago.

But you don't have to go that far to see the lasting impact of the goldrushes. While the Scots gave the pioneering village of Dunedin its solid start through hard work, sound finance, sturdy independence and a good education, the ethnic mix brought by lure of gold transformed the population, bequeathing to the city and province an additional permanent heritage of enterprise, self-help, pleasing architecture, a love of sport and a strong tradition of music and theatre that remains alive today.