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The Bendigo Goldfields region of Central Otago is an historic area comprising several former mining settlements in the southern South Island of New Zealand. It was part of the Otago Gold Rush that occurred during the 1860s leading to an influx of miners from California and Victoria, Australia. The Bendigo Goldfields region is located 17 kilometres to the northeast of Cromwell, at the head of Lake Dunstan. Named by Australian miners after a goldfield by the same name in Victoria, much of the Bendigo Goldfields are managed by the Department of Conservation as a Scenic Reserve. Visitors are freely able to wander at will, but care should be taken due the nature of the country and deep mine shafts. Children should be well supervised.

Geography
The former settlement of Bendigo serviced the goldfield, but nearby former settlements of Logantown and Welshtown were also established, and the gold mining relics. There are several walks with a number of interpretative panels, ranging from wanders to a 5 hour loop trail. Seen in the area are several stone building ruins, shafts, adits, the Aurora and Matilda battery sites, water races, pipelines, and several evocative wooden carts.

Otago Goldfields Trust pdf brochure of Thomson's Gorge.

Bendigo
(-44.92599°N, 169.3445°W) Alluvial gold was first discovered in Bendigo Creek as a result of the rush to the Dunstan area in September 1862. The initial prospectors arrived in Bendigo Creek, a tributary of the Clutha River, by traversing Thomson's Saddle in the Dunstan Mountains and dropping into Thomson's Gorge. In its heyday, Bendigo supported a population of XXXX and comprised hotels, a post office and a school. Despite the school, Bendigo was not a community that drew families, with most of the population being wage-earning men. Little remains of the Bendigo township apart from several stone huts.

Logantown
(-44.93534°N, 169.36868°W) Was named after Thomas Logan.

Welshtown
(-44.94011°N, 169.36962°W)

Logan's Reef
The generally held belief is that Logan pulled a swifty based on limited sources available.

Revision from Carpenter suggests otherwise.

Alta Reef
The Alta reef was discovered by Samuel Williams, a quartz miner from Victoria, in December 1869. Although he discovered it, Williams played little part in the subsequent development of the mine and instead moved to the Carrick Range and was a principal share holder in the Young Australian Co. The reef lies south of, and over the ridge opposite the present Come in Time battery. The Alta Company, formed to work the reef, purchased a battery from the Ida Valley Company in Rough Ridge and erected a five stamp battery in the Rise and Shine Creek with a race to drive the battery and a long tramway linking the workings. Problems were encountered in trying to recover the gold from the crushed rock due to the presence of abundant scheelite which made crushing difficult. This eventually forced the mine to close and the plant be subsequently sold in January 1875 to the Eureka Co. Gold recovered from eight crushings realised a grade between 3½ to 19 dwt (5.4 to 30.5 g) of gold per ton. Remains of the Alta Reef include the stamper battery platform, several adits and shafts and the tram way from the Alta mine to the aerial rope way bullhead (though the rails are long since removed) on the Come in Time side of the Rise and Shine Creek.

Bendigo Gold Light Company
The Bendigo Gold Light Company began working the lower reaches of Bendigo Creek on 18 May 1935 having procured and moved at great cost, a gold dredge from Waikaka, Southland. Issues were to plague the short-lived operational life of the project with the dredge being decommissioned a little over a year later with few gold finds. The Mines Department found that the test bores for the initial claim had been miscalculated and that the ground had been mined several times already. The dredge itself also suffered from a faulty tailings elevator, a lack of water to float the dredge, and critically, the bucket ladder could not get down deep enough to process potential virgin ground. The Cromwell Lions Club later took possession of the dredge's 30m-long bucket ladder and used it as a footbridge to access an island in the Clutha River. Following the filling of Lake Dunstan in 1993, the bucket ladder became redundant and was moved to its current resting place in July 2012. It is accessible to the public and overlooks the area the Bendigo Gold Light Company dredge once worked.

Current Gold Mining Activities
Most recently, the Rise and Shine prospect has seen renewed activity.

ODT Article

Santana Minerals has found the "sweet spot" as it continues to explore for gold near Tarras and has attracted a swag of investor interest that, if approved by shareholders, could see it begin more aggressive exploratory operations in the Bendigo-Ophir goldfield. The Australian-based company issued two statements to the Australian Stock Exchange last week, updating shareholders as to the drilling programme and its commitment to raise $9.375million in new shares.

In the first statement, on July 20, Santana Minerals executive director Dick Keevers said the company had "excellent results" in the Rise and Shine (RAS) deposit and drilling was continuing to expand resources beyond a new inferred platform of 1.9million ounces of gold announced earlier this month.

"Some very good assays as well as new visible gold in the drill core, particularly in the southeast part of Rise and Shine, where a sweet spot occurs near the expected southeast margin of the RAS deposit. An excellent result.

"Nearly a kilometre north of this sweet spot, where the RAS down plunge part of the deposit continues, we have achieved some substantial gold intersections, underpinning our continuing drive to keep pushing northeast down the plunge of the deposit with our drilling," Mr Keevers said.

Mr Keevers said the company expected to expand its most recent mineral resource estimate in the coming months.

The intercepts between two holes in particular deserved the title "jewellery box," his report said.

The second statement released yesterday announced that the company had received enough new share placements to confidently advance its Bendigo-Ophir project.

Mr Keevers said Santana had received commitments to raise $9.375million through the issue of 15million fully paid ordinary shares at $0.625 per share.

The company board was pleased the bids for new shares substantially exceeded the company’s placement capacity, under the ASX Listing Rules.

The board had decided to accept over subscriptions, subject to the approval of shareholders at a general meeting "to be called as soon as possible".

"These additional funds, if approved by shareholders, will enable Santana to more aggressively approach the immediate future exploration programme, particularly because recent drilling has both found excellent gold mineralisation and also increased our understanding of the geology of this mineralisation," Mr Keevers’ report said.

The investments would also allow additional metallurgical testing to be done.

Refs for Article
Otago Goldfields Heritage Trust Come in Time Battery information brochure.

Bristow pdf.

1875 Bendigo Auriferous

Logantown - Thomas Logan (1836-1897). Goldfields of Otago book.

List of Bendigo Goldfields Mining Era Relics
The following mine relics are presently accessible:

Verbatim
Sorrel (1999) p. 443 Named after the Australian gold town, is today’s name for an old goldmining area which originally included three settlements Bendigo itself, Logantown and Welshtown. In time, the latter two became part of the wider Bendigo site of alluvial mining and, later, of quartz mining when dozens of shafts were driven into the rock-studded hills. At only 15 kilometres from Cromwell, Bendigo is fairly easily accessible, but visitors should be aware that some of the shafts are almost 75 metres deep. The deepest shaft was driven by staff of the Cromwell Quartz Mining Company which ran the most successful quartz operation in the locality. By 1878 the shaft was down more than 90 metres and was later driven deeper. The Bendigo field - as it was known - returned some useful alluvial earnings by the few Chinese miners there as well as the Europeans. But the big money came from quartz, with Cromwell hotelier George Goodger being a prominent investor. In its heyday, the Cromwell Company had a battery of five stampers crushing ore, the company’s investment decision hastened by the return of 24 ounces a day for the first ten days. A lot of building went on at Bendigo, and many men went to work there, especially as wage-earners during the quartz period, but it was not a community that drew families. There was a post office and, in 1878, a school, hotels, and popular sports meetings. Intermittent mining for gold, scheelite and other metals has continued until the recent past. However, scientific advances and modern recovery methods have allowed Macraes Mining at Macraes Flat to outstrip Bendigo's claim as the most successful quartz mining operation in Otago. Like so many other former sites of townships created by the rush for gold, Bendigo is a relic of the past, but a place still worth visiting because some of the old shafts are visible on cliff faces, especially in the Aurora Creek district. And there is a stamper battery in the Rise and Shine Creek. A bonus for visitors is the magnificent view of the Pisa Range across the upper Clutha Valley, and north towards the mountains beyond Lake Hawea.

Thompson (1998) p. 284 Thomas Logan (1836-1897) was a pioneer of quartz mining in Otago and won enormous wealth. Born in 1836 at St Bees, Cumberland, he went to the gold rush in Victoria. He married Cissie McGregor in Melbourne and they had three sons. In the early 1860s he came to Otago and worked as an alluvial miner. In 1863, after finding 'wonderful specimens of gold-studded quartz', he took up a claim at Bendigo and tried to persuade investors to buy the equipment needed to work the rock. In 1865, after a good report, some Dunedin businessmen took up a claim, but when Logan felt they were treating him unfairly, he led them to poor ground and they withdrew, giving Bendigo the reputation of being a 'duffer' (an unproductive claim or mine). In 1868 he showed samples of his quartz to Cromwell storekeeper George Wellington Goodger who recognised its potential and put up the money for a battery. Logan, Goodger and others then formed the Cromwell Quartz Mining Co. After carting tons of rock down the steep hill to the battery, they won 238 ounces (7.4 kg) of gold from the first crushing. A new gold rush began, and Bendigo and Logantown were soon mushroom settlements, while Cromwell developed new prosperity. For many years Logan was the leading figure in the company he had established and also involved in other companies which sprang up. In 1875 he sold his shares for £ 15,000 and 'embarked upon a career of opulence.' He owned racehorses, joined in some of David Proudfoot's schemes, and continued to invest in mining, although often not successfully. After living in New South Wales for many years, where he won lucrative contracts for laying railway lines, putting some of the profits into donations to a hospital, he returned to Dunedin and died there on 12 August 1897. Ron Murray

Hall-Jones (1998) p. 86-97 Oddly enough it wasn't the prospectors pushing their way up the Clutha River Valley from Cromwell who discovered the gold in the Bendigo Creek tributary of the river. It was a party of miners who came through Thomsons Gorge in the Dunstan Mountains in late 1862 who discovered the alluvial gold in Bendigo Creek. Soon there were "about 150 miners" working in the gorge of Bendigo Creek and George Massing, with an eye for business, took over the ferry across the Clutha River at Rocky Point, near the mouth of Bendigo Creek. A tiny township, Wakefield, formed at the ferry landing, where the Wakefield Fern Hotel was started by Sam Box, "a tough old Cornishman and his estimable wife, an Irish lady with a captivating and persuasive brogue. Sam Box and his son, Sam, also did the packing from the ferry. Other saloons speedily followed under the ownership of Charles Hare, Joe Smith and Mrs J. Wilson, wife of 'Jack the Drummer'. These saloons became crowded in the evenings, when the shouting, drinking and yelling was something to astonish the new chum." A butchery was started by 'Sydney Bill' (William Smith) and a second-hand shop by 'Johnny All Sorts'. Most of the alluvial mining on the Bendigo goldfield took place in Bendigo Creek itself, its Aurora Creek branch and a tributary of the later, Swipers Creek, a strange name which was acquired in the following way, as George Hassing relates: "In the upper part of the gully, which was the richest and shallowest ground, were located some twenty-five miners, hard-working, honest fellows, but wonderful 'boozers'. This upper reach was known as 'Swipers Row'. Each Saturday forenoon the boxes were washed up. Dinner and a wash-up followed. Then all hands would troop down to Box's store to sell the week’s gold, buy next week’s tucker, have two or three drinks each and return to the camp, each carrying a couple of bottles of liquid stimulant. On arrival at the camp a big bonfire of manuka would be lit, the liquid pooled and the fun started. It generally commenced with vocal music, but as the liquid diminished and the hours grew later, the singing increased in volume till it became a hideous, demoniacal yelling that entirely overpowered and drowned every sound within a radius of a mile or so. Frequently on a Saturday evening, though three miles away, I heard the echo of the jollifications at Swipers' Row wafted on the evening air like the sound of reverberating billows breaking against a rock-bound shore. These were hard-working, honest miners. At any rate I found them so. But the indulgence in, and the love of liquor, made the best of men depraved. This was evidenced on one occasion when on a Friday night the sluice-boxes in Swipers' Row were swept clean by a flood and the usual Saturday's gold could not be obtained. A consultation was held, when it was decided to proceed to the store as usual and raise an alarm of fire. While the crowd was at the store, one of the miners set fire to an empty straw-thatched hut some distance down the gully. An alarm was raised by the crowd, and all including Mr and Mrs Box went to the rescue. Then, 'Harry the Slogger' nipped into the saloon, dextrously emptied the contents of the cashbox into his pocket and disappeared. On their return to the store it was found that a robbery had been committed, but the culprit remained a mystery, and the boys in the Row had their usual concert and spree in the evening."

From Wakefield a 'road' led across the flat to the mouth of the Bendigo Gully, where William Goodall established his Bendigo Gully Hotel and store on the site of the future township of Bendigo. A second hotel followed, the Solway, also a general store, butchery and bakery. In 1860 the township of Bendigo was officially laid out at the foot of Bendigo Hill, with a main street, York Street, 500 metres long. Today only a few ruins remain at the site of the old town of Bendigo. William Goodall's hotel was burnt down, but the Solway Hotel and garden are marked by a heap of stones among the trees on the south side of 'York Street'. On the opposite side of the 'street' are the more obvious stone walls of the bakery.

Logan’s Reef The early phase of alluvial mining at Bendigo was short-lived, from 1862 to 1866. It was the discovery of the gold rich Cromwell reef by Thomas Logan (hence the popular name of Logan’s reef) that made Bendigo famous. Vincent Pyke later described it as "undoubtedly the richest quartz reef in Otago. Some parts of it yielded as much as six ounces of gold to the ton, and as the stone was generally friable, great quantities of it could be extracted and put through the stamper daily."

In 1863 Thomas Logan located several lines of gold bearing reefs, including the rich Cromwell (Logan’s) Reef, on Bendigo Hill above Bendigo, but Logan was unable to develop them because of a lack of capital. In 1860, Julian Coates reported the reefs to a group of Dunedin businessmen, who formed a company which took up a large block of the reefs including Logan's Cromwell reef. Logan thought they were treating him unfairly and retaliated by deliberately losing the line of the reef. The Dunedin syndicate soon tired of the lark of profit and dropped the claim, which Logan promptly took up again. Logan's rich Cromwell reef had got off to a bad start and was dubbed a 'duffer' by all those who did not know the inside story. Logan pottered on at his reef with the two mates, William Garrett and Brian Hebden. The latter was otherwise known as "Charcoal Joe", because he used to temper the picks of the miners at his charcoal burner. None of the trio had money to invest in developing the reef and kept their income flowing by working intermittently on their alluvial claims. Then in 1868, the trio showed their quartz samples to George Goodger, an hotel-keeper at Cromwell. Goodger was a Californian who knew something about quartz gold and he recognised the value of their samples. He joined the partnership and put up the money to buy a quartz crushing battery. A twelve stamper battery from Hindon was erected at the foot of the Bendigo Gorge so that there would be a good head of water to drive it. The disadvantage was that the ore from the Cromwell reef had to be carted two kilometres downhill by a rough dray road to the Solway battery (as it was named) at Bendigo for crushing. The initial crushing in May 1869 returned 238 ounces of gold for ten days' work. Such a good result hit the headlines in the newspapers and the second rush to Bendigo began. For the first six months of 1870 the crushings produced a total of 8,129 ounces of gold, paying out enormous dividends to the four partners in the Cromwell Quartz Mining Co., as they called their company. By 1869 the miners had become tired of plodding daily all the way up the steep hill from Bendigo to the mine, then back again in the evening. So a new township, Logantown, was formed on the flat immediately below the mine. Named after Thomas Logan, the town was an irregular line of corrugated iron buildings, three hotels, stores, a butchery and a bakery, as well as miners' huts scattered along the dray road. Above the mine, on the crest of Bendigo Hill, was another township, Welshtown, so named because of its predominance of Welsh miners. Welshtown was essentially a cluster of miners’ huts, the exception being William Penngelly's Hotel across the gully of Swipers Creek. There was still no surveyed road from Bendigo up to the mine, so the Cromwell Quartz Mining Co. was saddled with the burden of having to maintain their own dray road. What with the excellent profits the company was making from the mine, it was decided to shift its Solwav battery up to the main shaft of the mine so that the ore could be processed on location. The Aurora battery in Aurora Creek was acquired to add to a new 20 stamper battery, which would be driven by steam power fired by coal. Appropriately, the newly constructed "Matilda" battery was named after Matilda Goodger, daughter of the original investor in the mine, George Goodger, and christened by Matilda at an opening ceremony in December 1878.

A new shaft, Mo. 2, was sunk from which the Company was to make its main profit. The shaft was huge, 2.7 × 1.2 metres across and was sunk to a depth of 78 metres. A poppet head was constructed over the minehead, which was surrounded by a machine house, smithy, carpenters shop and offices. The new Matilda battery rapidly justified its existence, recovering 4,086 ounces of gold for the first six months and 8,118 ounces for the first year. Thereafter the returns tended to drop off and what with problems with flooding and a miners' strike, the original owners sold out in 1884 to a new company. During their ownership of the mine the four partners had obtained half a million pounds worth of gold. Sadly, of the four only Brian Hebden, the humble charcoal burner, lived to enjoy his prosperity. He returned to England where he set up a successful business. George Goodger, the benefactor, committed suicide over financial matters. William Garrett, the mine manager, died at 31 after bring thrown from a horse and Thomas Logan, the discoverer, invested unwisely and died a poor man. Thereafter, the mine pottered on intermittently under various owners with variable success, but with production tending to taper off, until it finally closed down in 1938.

In 1908, ten stampers from the battery were shifted across to Thomsons Gorge to construct the Come in Time battery. The returns from the Come in Time battery for its first year of operations were disappointing and it closed down. A second attempt was made in 1909, but with the return of a meagre 4 ounces of gold the battery ceased work. After one final fling in 1919 with similar results it closed down permanently. Nevertheless the Come in Time battery still stands proudly at the foot of a gully just off the road through Thomsons Gorge.

The 'last' miner at Bendigo was a Second World War veteran, Wattie Thopson, who lived in his little hut on the bank of Bendigo Creek near the old town. For three long years he laboured single-handed at stacking a huge pile of boulders along the bank of the creek with the aim of getting down to the pay dirt at the bottom, only to have it buried beneath a deep layer of stones in a flash flood. A loner and deeply religious man, he lived close to nature. In 1979 he purchased a ticket with his hard-won earnings for a flight over the Antarctic, only to perish in the disastrous Mt Erebus crash. When viewed today from the flat at Bendigo township, the road up the hill to Logantown and Welshtown appears dauntingly steep. However it is no real problem for ordinary cars and well worth the effort. Where the steep section flattens out look left for two old drays and some crumbling ruins, which are all that remain of the important service town of Logantown. Continue uphill to the less important, but more spectacular ruins of the miners' huts at Welshtown, on the summit of Bendigo Hill. From here, fine views of the surrounding mountains are obtained. The walker is now faced with two options, a long loop track across Swipers Gully to Pengelly’s Hotel and on round Aurora Creek to Logantown, with a magnificent stone archway across Aurora Creek on the way, or a shorter descent through due workings of the Cromwell Quartz Mining Co. to the site of the Matilda battery. The motorist returning downhill should stop at the carpark at the No. 2 mine shaft. Today, only the foundations of the machine house and smithy and a huge pile of tailings remain. The opening of the 178 metre shaft has been covered over with a heavy iron mesh frame. Continue down the old dray track that was used to cart the ore down to the Matilda battery, about 200 metres downhill, where the foundations of the battery and some stone ruins will be seen.

References - To delete?

 * Bristow, P. (2007) A brief history of mining at the Bendigo Historic Reserve. Department of Conservation, Research, Development & Improvement Division. 24 p.
 * Hall-Jones, J. (2005). Goldfields of Otago: An Illustrated History (2 ed.). Craig Printing Co. Ltd. 208 p.
 * Hutton, F. W.; Ulrich, G. H. F. (1875) "Report on the Geology and Goldfields of Otago: Appendix 6 - Auriferous Reefs of the Bendigo District". Provincial Council of Otago. pp. 210–210.
 * Martin, A.P. and MacKenzie, D. (2016) Rise and Shine orogenic gold prospect, Otago: exploration summary. Mineral deposits of New Zealand–exploration and research. AusIMM Monograph, 31, pp. 149-156.
 * Sorrell, P., (1999) The Cyclopedia of Otago & Southland. Dunedin, NZ: Dunedin City Council. Vol. 4, p. 443. ISBN 0-9597722-9-4
 * Thompson, J. (ed.) (1998) Southern People: A Dictionary of Otago Southland Biography. Dunedin (N.Z.). City Council. 587 p.

Category:Gold mining | Category:New Zealand gold rushes | Category:People of the Otago Gold Rush