GABRIEL'S GULLY JUBILEE

Otago Witness, Issue 2978, 12 April 1911, Page 65

GABRIEL'S GULLY JUBILEE

SOME FURTHER REMINISCENCES. A VETERAN'S STORY. Mr John Shannon, of Ross Town, near Reefton, 74' years of age, but still hale and hearty, reached Port Chalmers in September, 1861, in the American ship Annie Kimbell, from Melbourne, and came up to Dunedin by the launch Expert, which was afterwards on Lake Wakatipu. "I stayed in Dunedin one night, - ' writes Mr Shannon, "having a shakedown at the Crown Hotel, then kept by Georgo Crowhuret. At this time ihera were four hoteis in Dunedin — the Crown, the Queen's Arms, the Provincial, and the Commercial,- and a private one called the Abbeyl. : gh House. There was one also in the Nbrth-Eaet Valley—or at least I heard so. "My iwo mates and myself started next morning for Waitahuna, via Tokomairiro. Wc had our swags on our backs, with tools, picks, -shovel, axe, dish, tent, frying-pan, and tucker in the shape of flour, bacon, etc., distributed amongst w*. We made the Woolshed Creek, which had not then been rushed, and arrived at Waitahuna on the 2nd or 3rd day after leaving Dunedin. When we got to Waitahuna there may have been 40 men on the field, but they /were getting gold. We pegged out a claim in Maori Gully. It was quite shallow, and our dish was very useful. There was no timber to be had, and as the people were, now flocking in by the-hundred the want was sorely felt. Then someone' thought of the woolshed at Cameron's Station—l think Cameron was the name —near the Woolshed Creek, and inside one week there was no woolshed remaining. I admit :'t was wrong, but the men were desperate—good gold to be had and no appliances. Our party got the makings of a cradle, and did very well. The flat was then rushed, and sluicing was the order of the day. Stores began to go up, and plenty of grog shanties (always grog before tucker !). The weather was very cold, and the want of firewood a great drawback. There was flour to be had the.n,t but no meat except rotten bacon. However, there was no occasion to go without firewood> or meat, for the back ranges and book gullies abounded in wild pigs, and .sheep which were not so very wild, but when a party of diggers went pig-bunting they were not particular. I do not know who. had the first store there, as there were three or four going up at one time, but the first lady that opened a grcg shanty was a Mrs Batta.rah —at least, that was the name she went by there. Then two brothers named Riordami opened a restaurant. They afterwards owned the Cafe de Paris in Dunedin. "Some time after I went there we had a warden, appointed', one Captain Baldwin; but, like the warden in Gabriel's Gully (Major Croker), he was a round peg in a square hole. After a few weeks a big rush was caused by a man named Sam Perkins, and Waitahuna was nearly deserted. The rush was a. bogus one, and it ncarlyf cost Perkins his life. I did not go. Our party made £270 per man in 10 weeks. We did better than a good many, as we had Victorian experience. About, the middle of December. 1861, there was another rush reported at the Blue Mountains. Our party left Waitahuna and went to Gabriel's (I remember it snowed for two days), and camped in Gabriel's about where the track went over the hill to Weatherstones, close to the Provincial Hotel. We took up a, claim -which hadi been partlv worked and abandoned, and did very well. There were several stores bendy to us then—Jack's store and Mitchell's, and a quarter of a mile up the Gully a Pole named Cassius had a store and hotel. The same man made a big fortune in Qusenstown and on the West Coast. This was about half a mile beloftr the Blue Sour. I may mention that the morninor the Blue Smir was rushed I pegged out the fecond claim from the prospector's, and never went near it again. The principal townshhi of Gabriel's was half-way between the Blue Spur and what i« now Lawrence. It was called Tuapcka then. I went about Christmas time to a rush at Waipori—or, rather, Lammerlaw Creek it was then, —and stayed there a week, but it rained all the time. I came back to Gabriel's and worked out the claim, which had been first worked by an old Otaaro identity, Watty Miller. "We had occasional glimpses of the outside world, as a man came' with newspapers Fi mm Dunedin weekly. He was rather a celebrity in his wav —Jock Graham. He wore a red coat and a feather in his hat. and blew a horn. When w© had worked out our claim I went to Weatherstones and took up some ground on Post Office Hill. While there I saw Sergeant-major Bracken

and Sergeant Trimble, on a Sunday, arrest the afterwards West Coast and Maungatapu murderers Burgess and Kelly. I stayed there until Hartley and Reilley reported their find on the Molyneux, and went to the Dunistan rush, and got a claim about 200 yards nearer Cromwell than their claim. It was then called Kawarau, and Clyde was the Dunstan. I went from Gabriel's via, the Beaumont, crossing there in a boat (fare 2s 6d). There was also a shepherd's hut, and I had a feed of mutton and damper, for which the charge was also 2s 6d. I made up the Molyneux to Mutton Town, camping out every night. I could get gold nearly anywhere, but had no cradle. 1 walked back to- Weatherstones, and paid a man named Trennery, living in Little Bourko street, £6 for a self-emptying cradle, and humped it back to the Molyneux. . , . "About October, 1862, Fox's or the Arrow rush set in. I crossed the river in a bul-lock-hide boat (price, 2s 6d), and made for the Arrow. There was plenty of gold but very little tucker. ■ There was beef in plenty at Is a pound, but flour had to t» packed from the Dunstan. _ There were rushes everywhere, and men did not know where to settle for the best. I went to Moke Creek, eight miles from wbc-rb Queenstown now is, but had to leave, as there was no flour, and not a house in Queenstown but Rees's homestead, and he had no flour to sell. After a time on the Arrow I went to the Shotover, and remained there till March, 1861. I need not bore you with my life on the river. The shallow beaches were extraordinarily good, but turning the river meant time, money, and heavy labour. I have known 63 men lose their' lives in one night, in July, 1863. The country about the hills is all soft slate, and the men were not particular where they camped. Heavy rain came on during the night, and carried them into the river. I left the Shotover about the let of March, 1864, and went to the Wakamarina rush, Marlborough, stayed there nine months, a.nd came from there to the West Coast in January, 1865, and with the exception of two short trips to Australia, have been there ever since. "Before I conclude I wish to say a word about Waitahuna. I was out with- three others pig-hunting one Sunday—diggers in those days could not afford to keep the Sabbath,—and we found a speck of coarse gold in a gully—or, lather, a little creek at the head of the flat. We tried it on the following day, and got some coarse gold, but it was not good enough to work then. It was called Nuggety Gully. When I was in Waitahuna Garrett and his gang stuck up several travellers on the short road to Dunedin from Weatherstones." BRIEF REPORTS. Mr Arthur Sinalair, Bluff, writes:—"l arrived at Dunedin in the barque Henrietta, from Glasgow, in September, 1860. I was in Dunedin only a fortnight, and then came on to Invercargill. 1 reached Gabriel's Gully on the 10th of August, 1861, after walking all the way fiom Invereargrll, which took six days. In those days there were no made roads at all, only bridle tracks. The township of Lawrence was unknown, and there was only one small township about half a mile up the Gully, with one store, and the police camp was on the spur above the township, with one sergeant and two policemen. The food supplies were taken up to the Gully in bullock drays, the charge from Dunedin to the Gully being £IOO a ton. After a while they used horse teams, and the roads l were eo bad at that time that two or three teams had to start together, so that they could pulj one another out of the bogs. The prices of food were as follows: —Flour, £lO per sack of 2001 b; sugar, Is 6d per lb; tea, 5s per lb; and everything else in proportion to these prices. When the first baker started to bake bread the price was 4s per 41b loaf, lire method of saving the gold was a short sluice-box, about 10ft or 12ft long, with an iron plate with holes bored in it at the end of the sluice-box to let the water and gold pas® through, falling into a ripple box with gneen baize at the bottom to catch the gold. I was only 15 years of age at the time, and was too voung to dig for gold, so I got into a store belonging to Mr MTndoe, of Tokomairiro. After a time he gave up the business, and I then went into the -store of Herbert, M'Kinley, and Co. The same business is still carried on in Lawrence, but by Mr M'Kinley's eons. At that time the branches of the bank were at Weatherstones Gully, and as M'Kinley and Co. were big buyers of gold, a part of my duty was to take gold to the bank every Monday morning on horseback. Weatherstones was then the main township. I was with tire firm until I left to go up to the lakes, and I did not visit Lawrence ag-ain until 1890." Mr Thomas Hughes, of Cambrians, came from Melbourne in a sailing vessel named the Eureka, and arrived in Dunedin about the end of November, 1861. Next morning he started up to the diggings, going through Waitahuna to Weatherstones. "The first bit of ground we had" (he writes) "was at the foot of the Blue pur, where my mate and I obtained 31b of gold in three weeks. After that I worked in several narts of tire Gully, the last place being about a quarter of a mile absve what was then known ais Gabriel's Township, where Lawrence is now. It w~s called the Junction. I was making about £1 a day on -that claim, but, like many irore, spending too much of it on. folly. I remember well the morning the old man went hurrying up the Gully, singing out "Otngo Witness ! Great discovery ! Eighty-seven pounds of gold!' In half an hour every party in the Gully was up hearing somebody read the news, and next morning the Gully was pretty well deserted. I was with the first rush to the Dunstan, and did very well. I never returned to Gabriel's Gully, but followed the rushes to the Arrow, the.Shotover, and all the rushes up country, though I never found anything to eciual the old Gully. I have been here now for 46 year's, and "still follow mining, but there is very little work I can do now. One thing I think worth mentioning, and that is the memoriible Sunday when the miners helped the police to ru nto earth that notorious gang comprising Sullivan, Burgess, and Lew. I was not there myself, a.s I was at Gabriel's, and it happened at Weatherstones." Mr J. G. Butler, of Cumberland street, Dunedin, arrived in Otago with the ship George*' Canning in 1857. He went toGabriel's Gully three weeks after Gabriel Read struck good gold. Read had been working with Mr Butler's cousin, Mr John Hardy, of Helensbrook, Tokomairiro. Mr Butler had a long talk with Read, and was asked by the latter whether it was true that Black Peter had found gold in the country. Mr Butler replied in the affirma-

tive, and was able to add vhat ho had been told Black Peter got his god from Munro's Gully. Mr Leslie Cheyne, of Inv, vcargill, writes: "I arrived in Invercargill in June, 1860, and in July went with a pt. rty to the Mataura. We were five days getting there with a bullock team. It wsC reported that there was gold there, and as I was an Australian digger they thought it was a good chance to get me with the hi. We were there a few weeks, and got 16oz of gold, mostly from the river. Then the river got very high and we left. I then turned my attention to the shipping and lightering trade. In July, 1861, I went up to Gabriel's Gully with a party to show them how to look for gold. I put them on the lay all right, and then bad to go back to Invercargill, as my brother could not do without me. I was only about six weeks at Gabriel's Gully, but we got a good bit of gold in that time, and the party I took up did well:"