After completing my last written travelblog entry, waving at the webcam pointing to the statue of Robert Burns, and strolling the market stalls lining the streets of the Octogan, I left Dunedin on a sunny late February afternoon for a long journey to the West Coast. I drove south initially on State Highway 1, past Mosgiel to join State Highway 8 at the intersection at Clarkesville. The road runs through scattered gold-rush towns, where, from the 1860's to the end of the century, gold was panned from the streambeds, dredged from the deeper rivers, and eventually mined and blasted from the land. I was drawn to an area called Gabriels Gully, named after Gabriel Read, an Australian who was the first to kick off the gold rush in 1861 by unearthing flakes of the precious metal
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