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Published: August 23rd 2007
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We wound about two-thirds of the way down the twisty Buller Gorge to the old mining town of Lyell for the night, with Geoff reminiscing about the last time he came down this way on his bike after hiking in Nelson Lakes National Park. The geologist and explorer Julius Haast named the Lyell mountain range and creek in honour of an eminent English geologist Charles Lyell long before anybody lived there - today Lyell is again just a grassy reserve tucked away at the side of the road where Lyell Creek flows out of the hills and joins the main gorge. Geoff remembers camping here before and being the only person in the campsite apart from a moldy caravan in the corner that was occupied by a guy that spent his days in the river, wearing a heated wetsuit and suctioning up the river bed in search of gold. The other inhabitants of Lyell had left over 100 years ago, but this bloke spent his winters alone still looking and over the years had managed to find nuggets as big as his thumbnail. Ten years on he appeared to have given up, we had the place to ourselves and we camped
up on the grass near what used to be the main drag of Lyell high street.
Lyell really captured my imagination firstly because I was intrigued by the man Geoff had described and secondly the way a town could rise and fall in a matter of years, Therefore I hope you can hang in their whilst I share a brief history of the place with you. In 1847 the first explorers were taken to Lyell by Maoris but it took until 1869 before Swiss miners made their first strike. Over the next couple of years the town had slow expansion with just one hotel, a butcher, 2 stores and a few terraced shanties in 1872. The next 6 months saw dramatic growth and at the height of the Gold Rush the town had 6 hotels, 3 stores, a drapers, School, Bakery, Ironmongers, 2 bookmakers, a blacksmith and 3 butchers. The town even created its own newspaper. In the photos you’ll see a clipping from the newspaper, showing how the Lyell Times took on the job of teaching pronunciation, as I read this I couldn’t believe my eyes when I noticed that Cirencester (the town I grew up in) was
one of their chosen words. A mine could make a profit from the reefs yielding half an ounce of gold per ton of quartz ore that they crushed, some of the reefs around Lyell were returning up to 10 oz per ton. Small veins could be traced off the main quartz reefs, but like the Nelson mines many of the veins had been broken up by earthquakes and would simply disappear.
After just over 20 years of expansion the town started to decline. It was hit by earthquakes, disease and most significantly a fire that destroyed 18 buildings. Finally in 1912 mining was stopped and the last remaining buildings (a Post office and Hotel) were destroyed by fire in 1963. This saw the end of the once prosperous town and all that is left today are a few display boards with photos to show what had gone before. Check out our pics and you can see what the town looked like in its heyday and now, with the Ezy van driving down what was the high street.
The next morning we followed the walk around Lyell and up the creek to the old battery that crushed the quartz
ore, with the ever present Fantails, flitting around us and snapping ubp the flies that we disturbed as we passed by. This became a common sight on our walks, along with the Tom tits, pied robins and tuneful calls of the Tui’s. The battery itself was slightly fenced off as there were apparently still traces of cyanide around that had been used in the extraction process, but ‘living on the edge’, we skipped over the fence and followed the well trodden path down to have a closer look. Back on the path again we followed the river where Geoff tried his hand at finding some gold, but to no avail and sadly we had to jump back in the van and continued our way down the Buller gorge to the west coast as poor backpackers. An hour later we arrived at the coastal coal-smokey town of Westport and according to the poster at the edge of town - “The Real New Zealand”!
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galazio
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Lyell Butcher
I am researching family history and the 'butcher' you mentioned was my ancestor who emigrated from Aberdeen in Scotland! HD