FIRST GOLD AT GREY

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 February 1928, Page 31 (Supplement)

FIRST GOLD AT GREY

The first parcel of gold obtained at the Grey was, on January'- 27, 1864, purchased by the ag*ent of the Canterbury Provincial Government (Mr. W. H. Revell) from a man named Hughes—l oz 16 dwt. 1 gr. at £3/10/per oz. A week after Reuben Waite had started as storekeeper at the Grey (July, 1864) Werita Tainui and the male members of his family came from the Greenstone Creek and sold to Waite 50 oz of gold. In the Blackball district many nuggets were obtained in 1865. One, weighing 22 oz. 17 dwt. was foiled in the Blackball Creek by a Maori, and nuggets of two and three ounces were quite common. In 1866 the Grey district became famous for its large nuggets obtained from the Moonlight Gully, one weighing 79 oz 18 dwt., and another 78 oz 17 dwt. Out of one claim two nuggets were taken, weighing 44 oz and 47 oz. One was the size and shape of a man’s fist, the gold of a. rich deep colour, and small poitions of quartz, with which it was impregnated, were of a rose tint, ’.rhe Moonlight wao exceptionally rich; as much as eight tons of gold was obtained from the Gully, worked by 100 to 150 men.

From the Three Mile Beach, south of Greymouth, which in 1866 carried a. large population, heavy parcels of gold were procured. The original prospectors wore reported to have lodged half a hundredweight of gold in the hands of a gold smelter at Hokitika, to be melted. The total output of gold in New Zealand from 1857 to December 31, 1904, if weighed like flour or coal, would turn the scale at 693 tons, giving a money value of a little over £65,000,000. The “Golden West” contributed very nearly half of it.