in search of fortune

they came in search of fortune
like many folk would do
and settled on the Arrow
in eighteen sixty two


A lovely day today. Cooler after the rain, but the day soon warmed up in the sun.

We took the 'top road' from Wanaka to Queenstown. A scary, scary road, with hairpin bends and sheer drops. Now, no local would recognise that description, as to them it's just 'the way to Queenstown'. Anyway, there is a lookout point and the views were incredible. This area was used quite extensively in the filming of Lord of the Rings and it was very easy to imagine the hobbits journeying along some of the ridges, with the mountains in the background.

We stopped for a short time in Queenstown - New Zealand's Adventure Town. We were not for any adventures today, although lots of people were. (Last time we were in Queenstown we went Jet boating, it grounded, we had to wade ashore and wait to be rescued!). If you want to know where we had lunch beside the lake, look here.

We spent most of the afternoon in Arrowtown, which was a gold prospecting town that more or less sprang up overnight. Gold was first found here in 1862, in the river Arrow. Although the find was supposed to be kept secret, it eventually leaked out (as these things do) and before the end of the year there were 1500 miners camped by the river. A town soon grew up around them. At the height of the rush, the population of the town rose to over 7,000 people. There are some amazing stories around the finding of huge quantities of gold, many of which are told in the excellent museum on the main street.

These cottages are just some of the many buildings that have been preserved and are as they were when the gold town was at its height. Built in the 1870s, the wooden cottages were the homes of miners and storekeepers and were some of the earliest buildings in the town. The stone building was originally the Oddfellows Hall Lodge.

An avenue of trees was planted at the same time, so the trees are now rather old and rather large - hence the deep shadows in the picture. You can also see some of the hills that surround the town and where the gold was found. Most of the miners lived up in the hills in lonely cabins and the Chinese workers who had been encouraged to come and labour made their own settlement. Remains of this meagre settlement is there to walk around and it tells a very sad story: Invited but Unwelcome just about sums it up. Interestingly there were a lot of Chinese visitors looking round the area, so I suppose it must be part of their emigration story.