Licence refusal ‘elates many fossickers'

Press, 13 January 1987, Page 7

Licence refusal ‘elates many fossickers'

By

BARRY SIMPSON

in Nelson

The refusal by the Planning Tribunal of an application for a mining licence in the Louis Creek and Howard River area (between Lake Rotoiti and Kawatiri Junction) will have elated the many fossickers who derive intense pleasure (and some dollars) from their leisure activity there. It will also recall for many “Depression” miners the privations suffered and the hard work and long hours they endured for 15 shillings a week and the chance to find and sell a small amount of gold. This all started in the early days of the Depression when officialdom exhorted jobless men to head for the Nelson hinterland where the Howard fields, opened in 1914, were still thought to hold a lot of gold. Some 300 men, often with families, moved in to mine in the Howard, the Maud and the Louis.

The 15 shillings subsidy was still being paid to miners when New Zealand went to war in 1939. The Howard fields degenerated during the war years as the older miners came down to work the

easier main creek. The terraces established in preceding years and the dams and water races used for working them, fell into disrepair. A lot of gold is still said to be there, but it is covered with overburden. Many fossickers from Nelson and Marlborough will work claims during weekends and, if stories are to be believed, quite a few mortgages have been paid off from week-end mining.

Before the European came to Nelson the Howard area was known to the Maoris as "Pukowini.” In 1846, Kehu guided Fox, Heaphy and Brunner to the site of Murchison by way of the Howard, which they named after James Howard, who was killed in the Wairau incident. Gold was first discovered in the Howard by Julius Vori Haast while he was exploring south-west Nelson. The “Porika” track, from Lake Rotoroa to the Howard, was used extensively by miners travelling to the Mangles, the Matakitaki and the Grey rivers.

The tribunal ruled that the recreational importance of the area outweighed arguments for commercial mining of the area.