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Just 29km beyond Naseby, past the sluiced cliffs and high heaped tailings of the Kyeburn Diggings, you will find the Danseys Pass Hotel. The Pass Hotel was built in 1863 and for a time was the centre of all activities in the district. The present stone building was plastered in the late 1950s with the…
(First known as Parkers and later as Hogburn) – has a distinctly historic quality. The rawness of the sluice-scarred hills exposed in the former goldmining days has now been softened by the spread of wilding trees. Inquire at the Naseby Information Centre (03 444 9961 or 03 444 9990) about walks and mountain bike riding…
Originally known as Rough Ridge Just north out of Oturehua, off Reef Road, a short walk takes you to the Golden Progress quartz mine with the only poppet head still standing in Otago. Above a 61m deep shaft, the 14m high structure supports wheels over which once ran ropes to hoist gold-bearing ore to the…
St Bathans began as a boom town known as Dunstan Creek in 1863. In 1864 some 2,000 miners lived in and around the general locality of St Bathans. St Bathans is today a little rural town, with two surviving operating facilities – its pub and the Post Office. Time has stood still and it takes…
Cambrians, off the St Bathans loop road, was originally settled by Welsh gold and coal miners in 1863. Along Cambrian Road, a number of mudbrick cottages still survive and are used today as holiday cribs. Cambrians is just one of a number of mining settlements which grew up along the eastern side of the Dunstan…
(Originally known as Blacks where the pub is still called Blacks Hotel) – Today, Ophir is a peaceful town close to the Manuherikia River, 26 km from Alexandra just off SH 85 to Ranfurly. It’s rich history comes from its many original stone buildings which include the restored Post and Telegraph Office built 1886, the…
A rich auriferous site lies exposed by the early miners who worked these terraces by sluicing, leaving behind tailing channels and herringbone tailings which from the air resemble fossil ferns.
Some 20km from Cromwell on the road to the Lindis Pass (SH 8), the Bendigo Loop Road takes you to the Bendigo goldfields, one of the few successful quartz mining areas in Otago. Mining in the early years, from 1862 to 1866, was spent working the creeks for alluvial gold. Later, quartz reefs were discovered…
In this magnificent, remote valley, with its upper and lower sections separated by a gorge, one can still get a good impression of what a small Central Otago mining area would have been like 90 years ago. The Nevis can be reached from Bannockburn by climbing to 1300m over Duffers Saddle on the Carrick Range…
Across the Bannockburn Bridge, 9 km from Cromwell is a tortured yet beautiful landscape sculpted by the miners sluicing for gold from 1865 to 1910. While walking around these diggings, you will discover fascinating evidence of water races, dams, tunnels, shafts, crumbling cob and stone buildings and old orchards at Stewart Town. Beyond Bannockburn, off…
