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Published: April 2nd 2008
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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
worked there and it was described in 1864 as a rowdy town. 80,000 ounces of gold was recorded
as being taken from there in the first 18 months. I'm sure my Gt Grandmother was not one of the
rowdy ones. Returning to Naseby though, we had planned to go out for a day with a local well known identity Allan Dunford. Allan runs the
website "Naseby Gold" he has a great setup with
two gold dredges on floating pontoons that he uses in some of the
local streams, we had arranged to go out with him for the day and learn the art of gold panning.
Allan took us to a stream towards St Bathans and set us up in the river with our gold pans and shovels and in our first pan that he demonstrated to us many flakes of gold were showing. The excitement of seeing those flakes in the pan was amazing and with gold currently selling for around $1000 an ounce I had visions of saying goodbye to Chubb and of retiring in a week or two. After showing us all the technique of panning for gold Allan set of downstream with his mini dredge and left us to pan away in the stream, It was a hot day and paddling around in the stream in gumboots working a goldpan and slowly building up my retirement fund was my kind of day. My mind kept wandering back to what it must have been like in the late 1800's when my Gt gt grandfather worked nearby at Blackstone Hill on his
own claim. As yet I haven't learnt if he made his fortune, but after raising 13 children most of which were born in the goldfields one would think possibly not as the final resting place of Charles and his wife, Sarah Annie is in the Oamaru Cemetery where there is no headstone.
Panning for gold is a back breaking experience, after several hours and watching my fortune slowly grow but finding the job harder than expected one by one we headed off downstream to
join Allan at his dredge, he had built a small dam with boulders in he stream and the dredge was sucking away at the stream bed and taking the gravels, mud and stones over a sluice where the gold which is 19 times hevier than water would fall into a matting at the bottom of the sluice and the stones, gravel etc are washed out the back of the sluice and back into the stream. At the end of the day the matting is lifted and washed and the gold which is trapped there is then
panned out to remove the gold from the other fine matter in the pan.The final washup was fun as you
saw the gold build up on one side of the pan. The day had past so quickly and we didn't get back into Naseby till about 7.30pm
Allan's lovely wife Denise reminded him that he was meant to be at a meeting at 8.00pm so we
emptied our gold into a container and headed back into Naseby for a meal at the Royal Hotel.
Ray & Shelly were heading off the next morning so we did the big divvy up of the gold,
it felt a bit like doing a drug deal cutting the gold in half on a piece of white paper
with a knife. Allan reckoned the days takings amounted to about $130. So guess I will still be turning up for work in a couple of weeks time.
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Neil
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You Two
Well Murray and Sheryl you have had an amazing experience,one not many Kiwi's ever see in photo's till folk like you produce the likes of this,never knew it existed but thats us olds and computers,where do you get the time!! I find retirement just so hectic!! must change our ways,hope to head South when winters departing and intend to follow some of your tracks,was wonderful to catch up again after all those Years,annoyed I was away but will be in touch soon as we return from Aussie and do a route check more throughly.Our Warmest Regards Pauline and Neil NN497/498 Oh My thats a few Years ago aye boy