HERMIT GOLD-SEEKER

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 217, 18 August 1925, Page 10

HERMIT GOLD-SEEKER

50 YEARS IN BUSH NEST

SYDNEY. Aug. 5

A: lint cunningly built like a huge nest, just off the faintly-discerniblo track of ail old Government road, had

been the homo for over 50 years of John Wright, known as “Yankee Jack, the Hermit of Hanging Rock Mountains,” near Tamwonh. The old man, who had spent his life fossicking for gold, died recently at the age of 86 years. Born in London, lie arrived at Nundle about tbo year 1851. At that time, influenced by the discovery .if gold fields in Victoria, men began to seek gold in the Nundle Ranges. He was among the first- prospectors, and saw the first gold taken out of the Hanging Rock Mountains. Then came the boom days —fortune making and spending. During this period lie crossed the Pacific seven times and visited every country in the world — only to return to the Nundle goldfields. Oil his first trip to America, when only a boy of 18, lie took with him seven bags of “black” gold —or gold impregnated with iron. CLAIM-JUMPING. He had bitter memories of claimjumping, nearly all his mines having been taken from him by force. He had opened many mines, but in his own words, “got nothing out of them.” As far back as the people of fhe district can remember, “Vankec” bad been mining in the Hanging Rock Mountains. His mine was a magnificent spectacle, and it was only with difficulty that one could realise that it was the work of one man. Hundreds of tons of earth had been removed and carried away on his own shoulders to the four-stamper battery erected by himself about half a mile away. “Yankee” never married, and once tokl an interviewer that lie had never had a sweetheart, shrewdly adding: “And I have never had any troubles.”