Home Contact About Margaret Copland  Schools  Years 1-8  Schools Secondary  Immigrant Stories    Women & Politics    Dissent & Disaster  Gold   Te Puna Ora    Workshop    Audio

Stories and rhymes about the Otago Gold Fields as told by

Betsy

This programme can be adapted for any age group

Betsy is left at home to do all the work while her brothers are off to the goldfields. She tells the story of herself and her brothers and the stories of some of the characters of the Otago Goldfields:

Black Peter (Edward Peters)

who found gold at Tuapeka in 1858.

Edward Peters came from Goa. Before he arrived in Otago he had worked on a whaling ship. He had been on the gold fields in Australia and found gold while working on the sheep station owned by Davy and Bowler.

He is probably the first to set up a claim but he is not recognised by the Otago Provincial Council and receives no reward until 1885 when he is given a small pension.

Gabriel Read

Gabriel Read was a gentleman from Tasmania. He came to Otago looking for gold.

He inspected Black Peter's claim and then went on to prospect the Tuapeka River.He found gold on the evening of the 23 May 1861, in Gabriel's Gully. The Otago Provincial Council gave him one thousand pounds reward and the Otago Gold Rush began.

Horatio Hartley and Christopher Reilly

They arrived in Gabriel's Gully from California, too late to find a good claim so they continued prospecting in the area. They found gold in the Clutha River and so began the Dunstan (Cromwell) Gold Rush.

DanielErihana and Hakaria Haeroa

In 1862 at Maori Point, Daniel Erihana and Hakaria Haeroa went to resue their dog who had been stranded on a beach in the Shotover River and found gold

The Chinese Miners

who were invited to Otago from Australia in 1865, to work over the claims abandoned by the other miners. The Chinese worked co-operatively, using sluices and eventually one of their number invented the bucket dredge. This changed the nature of mining.

Bully Hayes

The gold fields attracted all sorts including the notorious blackbirder and pirate, Bully Hayes, who arrive in 1863 and opened the United States Hotel in Arrowtown.

Henry Garrett

had his own gang of thieves. He staged a spectacular robbery at Waihola of fifteen miners on their way to Dunedin. No one was harmed and Garrett got away successfully. He was later arrested and jailed in Dunedin on unrelated charges. While in jail he wrote treatises on the french Revolution.

Related stories

Jimmy and Jack

A rhyming story of a pair of young miners (fiction).

Suitable for younger children

Ah Choo

The story of the last Chinese miner in Waikaka (oral sources)