So yesterday 26th the on-site meeting finally took place. I met 3 people from the Queenstown Lakes District Council at the river cafe at 11am. From there we walked up to Cooper’s Terrace, a 10 minute walk along the walking track beside the pipeline while I gave a running commentary about my progress so far. They were very impressed by the sight of the ruins from the track as we approached.
2 archaeologists from Heritage NZ were waiting for us already. We walked over the whole site, obviously, and then chewed over the process going forward from my by now partially-dismantled camp. It was very constructive. Here’s the thing. If I want to restore this historical site, I can basically give it a go. All of these guys were supportive. But there clearly will be a blackberry bramble of applications to be made, new consents applied for, forms to fill etc. etc. Im not really up for that. To return next year I have 2 options: 1. I return just to keep clearing vegetation, ignoring the 3 mounds I feel sure are the 3 missing huts. And keep looking for a high-roller to fund the big picture. Or ... 2. I apply for a new AA which means I can dig and uncover those mounds. The catch is, Heritage NZ regulations mean I would have to be “supervised” by a qualified archaeologist. Which may not sound hard, but there is only 1 guy here, he is only part-time, and he’s super busy. The chances he’ll do it, I think are slim. Who else is there? Don’t know if there is anyone else ..... Everyone is supportive of what I plan to do. The issue for me now is..... the massive amount of work required off-site if I continue with the vision to oversee a full restoration. Right now I am brain-tired and it all sounds like too much. I will think on it once I’ve recovered when the synapses are connecting again.
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Ever since the site was vandalised, and my gloves stolen, I’ve been concerned that the lowlifes would come back. So I’ve been returning to the site each evening to do a quick patrol. Last night...? Too late. The big steel toolbox, lent me by a local volunteer, was stolen. It was full of tools bought with donations, mostly from my friends. Including my own tools, some of which are irreplaceable. All gone. Distressing. The police are now onto it. Heritage NZ too.
But I’ve found 3 more huts! I now know the layout of the settlement. So let’s move on and savour that for a day.... or a week.... or, I dunno...... forever...? So much for feeling safe. On Sunday 21st, yesterday, I was waiting for Mike to pick me up by the Bush Creek cafe by the river, when I got into conversation with a vagrant guy I’d seen around town who pans for gold all day. He was raving about kettles and bits of wood being nailed to trees and I realised with a sinking feeling that the guy had been through my camp. Mike arrived and we drove up. 4-5 minutes up the rugged road to Macetown (4-wheel drive essential). He’d got into the lock-box, he may have been trying that combination lock for days. He took my good gloves. But the worst thing was he’d dug big holes around the site, including a huge hole in a corner of Hut 1. Police and Heritage NZ have been notified.
not pleasant, but not enough to dampen our excitement at realising we had found more huts. Because it wasn’t just that small hut, Hut 4 by the road riverside, but I now understood the layout of settlement. Beside Hut 1 is Hut 2 and Hut 3. We’d been walking around and over them all this time. As is the way with archaeology. so I got my trowel out to confirm this. Very tight grass covers these mounds. Hard going. But within an hour I had the lovely straight line of a robust wall 40mm thick. Came home feeling pretty happy. Told the local journalist Scoop we need to go National with this. We’ll be getting together this week. Maybe when the council visit on Friday, and hopefully, Heritage NZ. We were right. I can confidently say it IS a hut. How did I work that out?
The next time I was working in the area of Mound 1, a couple of days later, I started clearing back the surface matting of roots and soil on the inner east wall side to see if I could find a clear clue that this was a hut. And I found it pretty early on: a row of evenly laid stones below. And during the brushing down of the stones so I had it nice and pristine for the photos, yet another piece of tin started to emerge. But this I left there. I knew I did not yet have the authority to dig further once I had established I had a hut, and no more work would be done here this season. So exciting. My first significant find for the season, with little more than 2 weeks left to go....! So satisfying..... and yes, something of a relief. I covered the stones with foliage, wondering whether it would stay protected from damage after I’d gone. After all, it is right by the road to Macetown, albeit dropped at a lower level and for the most part screened by trees and vegetation. But most people around here are good - hikers/nature enthusiasts who only pass through Cooper’s Terrace. Unless they stop to look around the exposed ruins on the other side of the road. I took my tools back to camp, locked them in Angus’s big steel lockbox, hoisted the backpack and set off home. I was so slow to get this blog up and running I neglected to include Artifact 1 so here it is. Found 14.02.21. A surface find, so therefore out of context, but found lying on the outer side of the east wall of Hut 1, still important. It is an implement of tin sheeting, fashioned into a cylindrical shape, wider at one end, and bound by wire at the other. Possibly connected a tool to a handle. The making of it intriguing. You can see where a tool like a big nail has been used to twist the wire tight. It’s cool.
It’s Artifact 1. Last Sunday volunteer Mike came up and spent the day on-site. Mike comes all the way up from Kingston, at the foot of Lake Whakatipu, as passionate as me about Cooper’s Terrace. He’d already done some weed-eating and spraying before I got there later in the morning. We walked over the site as we usually do, discussing the possibilities of discovery and how the miners lived here, Mike dropping fascinating pearls of knowledge from his reading of gold-mining communities like this one. We were at the area by the road that had been cleared of trees so the poplars could be felled. Still no sign of the Fire Brigade to do this mahi, but I’m confident it will happen in time. Mike told me how he shifted a pile of tree trunks to the side and noticed a mound of stone that looked suspiciously 3-sided. It’s so great to have someone on the same page, who is careful and understands the process. It could just be stone tumble, but we agreed, if it was a hut, then it was in danger of being obliterated, being right in the path of machinery, stomping boots and falling trees. I am not allowed to dig, under the Archaeological Authority I have....I am only to clear the vegetation. But I knew from my experience on digs overseas what to do. If it was a hut then I had to protect it. And I had to try and find a vital clue that would confirm our suspicions. I didn’t know when the fire brigade boys would turn up so had to act fast. After we had cleared away the periwinkle, i set to with my trowel around the edges and an inner corner. Very quickly glass came into view, then tin. Then more glass and more tin. I photographed every stage of the process carefully. Bits of old tin sheeting are commonplace throughout the site, but I eventually removed a lovely intact squat clear glass bottle .... Artifact 2 ....... for its protection. I then covered the site with foliage until my return. Still no wiser as to whether it was a hut, but when I got home and looked over old photos, it got exciting.
> “The careful steady process of clearing back the vegetation from the gold-mining ruins continues. I have a month more to go of this work, and the focus is now on get the poplar trees down. Some of them are impacting badly on the collapsing walls, pushing the stones out of their alignment. I’ve organised the Arrowtown Fire Brigade to take down 5 of them to start with, and even that is a massive job. It’s done voluntarily in their spare time and they haven’t managed to get a crew up to the site yet but I’m assured they haven’t forgotten about it. Everyone is just so busy around here. Volunteers are thin on the ground ...... people are working hard at their own jobs to survive, COVID having taking quite a hit here. Still, volunteer Angus came up last week and cleared a path with his chainsaw for them to get their heavy machinery in.
> So it’s a bit of a waiting game. Heritage NZ are coming up on 26th for a site visit, and there will be some decisions made then. I have made no further progress on securing corporate funder for a full restoration of the site, but we’re not giving up. As long as, of course, we can raise enough from donations to keep going back and getting the site cleared of all vegetation. Volunteer Mike built me a lovely shelf for the camp...... > We are here for the long-haul....!” So this photo below shows you the remains of what I call Hut 1. I found this hut deteriorating under the blackberry thicket, completely forgotten as the entire settlement was, in 2009. I knew the hut was there as all us kids did who roamed the hills during the holidays. I have fond memories of running barefoot across the soft periwinkle carpet to the doorway. The corrugated iron roof was still there on a wooden frame, although 1 sheet in the SE corner was gone. Behind the hut stretches the remains of a substantial garden wall, featuring and unusual entranceway. This entranceway I have established the exact potion of using archive photos, and is a compelling reason for this whole area of the settlement to be rebuilt, restored, and be given a new life.
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Jan MorrisonProject Manager of an archeological dig of a 1800s European mining settlement near Arrowtown, Central Otago. Archives
April 2021
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