CROMWELL was originally known as The Junction, and is now a modern town, redeveloped because of the Clyde Dam project and Lake Dunstan, which started to fill in 1992. In the Mall, the Cromwell Museum displays gold relics while down at the lakeside, part of the original commercial centre, Old Cromwell Town, has been painstakingly recreated stone by stone, and is now a very attractive historic precinct.

Cottage ruins and old fruit trees at Stewart Town (Photo: Elisabeth Williamson)

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 Schoolhouse Road, is the old wagon track to the Nevis and Nokomai. The track climbs up through the stone remains of Carricktown and leads to the massive, recently restored, Young Australian water wheel at 1100m on the Carrick Range. This 7.9m diameter wooden water wheel was dragged up the mountain in 1874 to drive the Young Australian battery. Half of this battery, which once stood beside the wheel, was later moved to the opposite side of the gully.

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 and dropping down to The Crossing in the Lower Nevis Valley.

Both the Lower and Upper Valleys were worked using all the various mining methods including cradling and paddocking on small claims, sluicing, tunnelling and dredging, spanning a period from 1863 to the 1960s. There was even mining being carried out in the 1990s, and through the turn of the century. Leaflets describing the Nevis can be obtained from the Cromwell Information Centre.

The gold rush of the 1860s left few traces, but the hydraulic elevators and the six or more dredges which worked on the valley flats between the 1890s and early 1900s left behind most of the evidence which can be seen today. Many of the steep shingle faces, dredge ponds, long races and regular heaps of tailings are easily seen from the road. The remains, believed to be those of the Nevis Crossing dredge, lie near the mouth of Schoolhouse Creek. Because of the remoteness of this goldfield, these workings have been left largely untouched, and now provide the best representation of any of the original goldfields in Otago or Southland.

The Come-in-Time stamping battery in the Rise-and- Shine Creek (Photo: Jean Gibson)

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 the hills above and hard rock mining became dominant in the later years. The main area around Logantown and Welshtown was mined for about 40 years on and off, but if the Come-in-Time and Rise-and-Shine mines are included, the whole area was mined for over half a century. Dozens of crumbling stone cottages and huts can be found amongst the scrub or in the open, but the miners also left deep mine shafts and tunnels, so it is wise to keep to the tracks and watch your step on your explorations.

Miner’s Cottage and ruins at Welshtown, Bendigo (Photo: Jean Gibson)

It is worth spending some time exploring Logantown, Welshtown and the Matilda Battery site. Most impressive is Aurora Creek, where the mines are high on the steep faces of a small kanuka-covered gorge. The narrow rock-walled drayroads linking the mines are immediately obvious. You will appreciate the tremendous effort that was involved in finding and winning gold from this rugged terrain. Also worth a visit is the Come-in-Time stamping battery in the Rise-and- Shine Creek. It is signposted off the Thomson Gorge Road. A brochure on the Thomson Gorge Road can be obtained from Alexandra or Cromwell Information Centres.

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