The beginning!

"To the West to the West, where the diggers repair, There's no flies about it, the gold is all there, And chaps who've been digging a very short while Walk into the bank and dispose of their pile. Where he rain falls in torrents and leaves such a flood, And you sleep on the ground and your mattress is mud, Where a fresh in the river may come down some day, And very near sweep Hokitika away." Charles Thatcher, Gold digger on Heaphy river 1865