Blogs from Naseby, Central Otago, South Island, New Zealand, Oceania

Sheryll and I have been coming back to Naseby for holidays for over 10 years now. The first time was with all of the 3 children and we were booked into a Miners Cabin (which is basically 4 walls and a roof around a double bed) the guys were meant to be sleeping in a tent beside the Cabin. When we arrived it had been raining for about 3 hours and there was about 3 inches of water flowing through the site that the kids were meant to be camping on. Suffice to say that 4 of us top and tailed in a double bed and I think it was Kyra who slept on the floor in the only remaining available space. That hasn't stopped us coming back though, for me I think it is ... read more

PANNING & DREDGING FOR GOLD AT NASEBY Naseby is a unique old gold mining town of about 86 permanent residents and about 280 homes of which most are holidays homes or as they are known in the South Island, Cribs. It was the location of a Gold Rush to the Hogburn stream in the 1860's and it was to here that my Gt gt Grandfather Charles Roberts came after leaving the goldfields of Victoria, Australia. My Gt Grandmother Ethel Gertrude Roberts was born nearby at Hamiltons in 1870, All that remains now of Hamiltons is a lonely cemetery high on the hill above the Maniatoto Plains and scattered through the mullock heaps traces of sluicing pipes and scraps of metal left behind by the miners from the days of sluicing for gold. Once briefly 2,000 miners ... read more