Old gold-rush village retains its glitter

Press, 22 July 1986, Page 32

Old gold-rush village retains its glitter

Fox’s Rush was once a booming Central Otago goldrush town. Today, more than 120 years later, it is booming once more — as a tourist centre, known as Arrowtown.

Visitors to Queenstown should not miss the opportunity to make the pleasant 40km round-trip through this quaint and historic village, returning via Lake Hayes.

Arrowtown is a visual delight, with its well-pre-served cottages and treelined streets set against a back-drop of snow-capped mountains. Much of the town’s charm lies in its beautifully maintained old building of wood and stone.

Schist rock was one of the few locally available building materials, and

several good examples are as fine now as they were a century ago — the Masonic temple, the museum, and the council chambers, for instance. The old stone Jail, built in 1875, is a grim reminder that gold brought

not only honest diggers to the settlement but also rogues, robbers, bushrangers and murderers. Gold was first discovered in the area by William Fox in 1862, and the Arrow River soon became famous as one of the richest alluvial goldfields in the world. Many of the cottages that stand flush with the footpath along the

“Avenue of trees” (Buckingham Street) were built between 1864 and 1867. The street was named after the Buckingham family who ran the Provincial Hotel, one of seven in the town during the height of the golf rush. Many of the original buildings have been restored to retain the atmosphere of the town’s golden era.