LAST CLAIM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26963, 24 December 1948, Page 8

LAST CLAIM

TUAPEKA COUNTY

SLUICING AT SAILOR’S GULLY

OPERATIONS TO CLOSE

Up to the time when Gabriel Read and Captain Baldwin prospected the Waitahuna River, in July, 1861, its waters were crystal clear. The great rush to the Waitahuna Gulley then took place, and the limpid stream became yellow and muddy. Now, after 87 years, the little river will once again run clear and pure, for this week will bring to a close the operations on the Sailor’s Gully Sluicing Company’s claim. It is the last in “the Gully,” and indeed, the. last sluicing claim to operate in Tuapeka County.

The original Sailor’s Gully party, which included Pat Callanan, Bob Bruce and Tom McLaren, brought their water from Boundary Creek, in John Rose’s' run. This race is still called the Irishman’s race. Later members of the party were Mick Carmody, Mick Kearney, John Teesdale and Andrew Wightman, sen., but finally investors from Lawrence held the bulk of the shares. In 1915, the Sailor’s Gully Company bought out the Norwegian ‘party’s water rights, races and plant for the sum of £4200, and installed an hydraulic elevator. The company also laid a pipe line some two miles and a-half long, giving a pressure at the nozzle of about 700 ft.

For some years the claim has been leased and worked successfully by Messrs A. Wightman and D. Tippett. It has been a source of interest tu visitors to what was once a busy township. Now the whole of the mining plant is being offered for sale, and the familiar roar of water from the nozzle on the sluicing claim will no longer be heard. Once again the river will run crystal clear and ripple over the gravel bars from which its Maori name, Waitahuna (sand—or' gravel—bar in the water), is derived.