Gravestone at Drybread Cemetery Photo: John Douglas

Cambrians, off the St Bathans loop road, was originally settled by Welsh gold and coal miners in 1863. Along Cambrian Road, a number of 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 Mountains. Matakanui has some fascinating old buildings, and places with intriguing names like Devonshire Diggings, Tinkers Diggings, Drybread Diggings and Vinegar Hill are worth exploring if you have time. Much can be learned from the gravestones in cemeteries in the area, such as the one at Drybread.

Post Office at St Bathans Photo: Department of Conservation

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 little imagination to picture the numerous stores, banks, blacksmith, the hotels with their dancing girls, and hundreds of diggers here in its hey-day, as you stroll around the town.

Starting in January 1864, Kildare Hill (originally some 120m high) was by 1934, reduced to a pit 58m deep by first sinking shafts to bring the rich dirtwash to the surface, then sluicing away and finally from the 1880s using hydraulic elevator technology to raise the gravel. In 1933 this was the deepest hydraulic mining lift in the world (68.8m), and the enormous hole was flooded to become Blue Lake when mining was abandoned in 1934 – it is now a reminder and testimony to the miners toil. You can still enjoy a beer at the Vulcan Hotel (est 1869) in what was the former Ballarat Hotel building (built 1882) or visit the former 1909 Post Office now the “Despatches” shop, view the Gold Office or visit the 1880s Public Hall when open. Inside there are interesting wall displays recalling the town’s early days.

Golden Progress Mine, poppet head and boilers, at Oturehua Photo: Roger Gibson

(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 surface. Close by was the battery, since removed to a site in Westland, but the steam boiler which once powered it still remains on the site.

(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 through the gold workings. Have a browse in the Early Settlers Museum and then take a step back through time in the nearby watchmaker’s shop.

Naseby was once the commercial and local Government centre of the Maniototo until Ranfurly took over this role early in the 20th Century. The town and its cottages remain much the same as in the last century and walking through the old town area leaves little to the imagination of what the town was once like.

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 latest addition in the early 1990s. A stonemason called Happy Bill who built the stone building in schist in 1863, took his payment in beer, a pint for every schist boulder shaped and laid on the thick walls. Today, the hotel still offers accommodation and a stopover for travellers crossing the narrow and tortuous Danseys Pass linking the Maniototo to the Waitaki valley. At the nearby picnic area at German Creek, is a grove of different exotic trees, planted out to represent the homeland of every miner working on the goldfield.

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