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 rushes in California and Victoria, Australia. These miners brought with them a rich diversity of cultures from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Sweden, China, Australia, Canada, and the United States. The area was named after the goldfield by the same name in Victoria.
Mining continued until 1943, when the government mining subsidy was withdrawn. Renewed interest since then has triggered activity in the 1980s, early in the 21st century, and again in the 2020s. The Bendigo Goldfields region is located to the northeast of Cromwell, at the head of Lake Dunstan.
Much of the Bendigo Goldfields are managed by the Department of Conservation as both a Scenic Reserve and Historic Reserve. A bonus for visitors is the magnificent view of the Pisa Range across the upper Clutha Valley, and north towards the mountains beyond Lake Hāwea. 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 Bendigo Goldfields region covers three former settlements: the township of Bendigo, and the two unofficial townships of Logantown and Welshtown. Bendigo initially serviced the early alluvial goldminers on the lower reaches of Bendigo Creek (near Goodall's Hotel), Aurora Creek, and the upper Rise and Shine Creek. Logantown and Welshtown would eventually become part of the wider Bendigo site of alluvial mining when quartz miners drove dozens of shafts into the hills.
Within the Bendigo Scenic Reserve there are several walks with a number of interpretative panels, ranging from short wanders to a 5-hour loop trail. Several stone building ruins, vertical shafts, adits, numerous battery sites, water races, pipelines, and the remains of several wooden drays may be seen in the area.
Bendigo
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 Gorge.
With reports of significant quartz finds people flocked to Bendigo (), but it would not be until 1869 that the Provincial Government was forced to survey and lay out an official town. The town was set out in a simple grid pattern similar to the successful Cromwell Company's Solway Battery. The two primary streets were York and Oxford, the junction of which still remains today with the remainder of the town now being largely covered in vineyards.
At its peak, Bendigo supported a population of 130 and by 1869 consisted of the Solway Battery, Goodall's Bendigo Reef Hotel, Mitchinson and Harrison's General Store, a blacksmith, a drapers, a billiards saloon and the huts of men working at the battery. A second hotel, The Solway, was opened in 1870, followed by a bakery and butcher's shop in 1872. Bendigo's popularity was short-lived however; by late 1875, most of the businesses were abandoned in favour of nearby Logantown.
Little remains of Bendigo today. York and Oxford Street form part of the Bendigo Loop Road, while all that is left of the town are the stone remains of the bakery, some mature poplar trees, and remains of other stone walls. Extensive vineyards now cover the terraces and lower slopes surrounding this area.
Logantown The early phase of alluvial mining at Bendigo was short-lived, from 1862 to 1866. Prospectors were driven to the source of the gold bound in quartz reefs in the nearby hills. It was the discovery of the gold-rich Cromwell Reef by Thomas Logan that made Bendigo famous. This discovery, in 1863, eventually resulted in most Bendigo businesses moving up the hill to be closer to the reefs being mined. By December 1869, a thriving town had built up on an area of flat ground midway between Logan's and Colclough's reefs; this became known as Logantown ().
In 1869 the Cromwell Argus newspaper reported that Logantown consisted of four stores, three hotels, two butchers, a bakery, and a drapery. There was also a blacksmith (two, a year later), a saloon, a restaurant, and (by April 1871) seven hotels. This was in addition to miners' tents and Thomas Logan's own residence. At its peak, Logantown and the wider area of Bendigo may have had a population of 400. The rapid growth of Logantown businesses far surpassed the population, and by September 1871 many businesses had started to move to Quartzville and Carricktown in the Carrick Range following quartz reef discoveries there. A community hall was erected in 1874 which doubled as a church and, briefly, as a school. In 1878, the school was moved halfway down the hill toward Bendigo. The site of this building is marked by a remaining concrete chimney. The school was shifted again in 1909 to a site near Crippletown, now beside State Highway 8.
Logantown continued as a much smaller settlement through the remainder of the 1870s and by 1878 was reported by the Dunstan Times newspaper to consist of a hotel, a butchery, and a few huts.
Today, Logantown contains the walls of numerous stone buildings and a wooden dray outside the former residence of Thomas Logan.
Welshtown Further up the road from Logantown, on the crest of Bendigo Hill, was the settlement of Welshtown (), so-named due to the predominance of Welsh miners. Welshtown was essentially a cluster of miners' huts, stables, and gardens with the notable exception being William Pengelly's hotel across the gully of Swipers Creek (the western tributary of Aurora Creek).
Welshtown was the scene of a bitter dispute between the Cromwell Company and its employees, the latter of whom went on strike for better pay in 1881. It is the only instance of such action in any industrial conflict in New Zealand's history in which each miner whose house, hut, or cottage was built on the 16½ acres of the Cromwell Company lease (half of Bendigo's Welshtown) had their homes destroyed. Some of the remains of houses demolished by the Cromwell Company bear testament to this dark period of Bendigo's history, reminiscent of the Irish Land Wars and Scottish Highland Clearances.
Like Logantown and Bendigo before it, the remains of Welshtown have been reduced to the stone walls of several miners cottages and the Pengelly Hotel.
Mining history
Although the first gold to be discovered in Bendigo was alluvial in origin, the greatest rewards would come from the quartz reefs in the nearby hills. Of all the mining claims and leases that were taken up at Bendigo, only that of the Cromwell Quartz Mining Company (Cromwell Company) was profitable. The Cromwell Company's battery at Bendigo started crushing in March 1869 and it was the success of these first crushings that spurred the rush to the Bendigo reefs.
Initial alluvial gold discovery Alluvial gold was first discovered in Bendigo Creek as a result of the rush to the Dunstan area in September 1862. A party of miners used Thomson's Saddle, an old Māori greenstone trail over the Dunstan Mountains, in order to take the ferry across the Clutha River at Wakefield (now known as Crippletown) near Rocky Point, on their way to the Shotover, Arrow, and Cardrona goldfields. Gold in the gravels of Bendigo Gully was poor and referred to as a tucker field (that is, there was only enough gold to provide for a miner's subsistence). However, by 1864 with the advent of sluicing companys' water races, up to 150 miners had pegged out claims along the creek with some yielding 515 t oz (155467 g) a week. Most of the alluvial mining on the Bendigo goldfield took place in Bendigo Creek itself, Aurora Creek (and a tributary of the latter, Swipers Creek), and the upper Rise and Shine Creek. The latter was worked by a group of Swedes in the 1860s who, in 1867, brought a water race a considerable distance across the Thomson Range to provide water for sluicing.
The early rush for alluvial mining at Bendigo was short-lived, from 1862 to 1866. It was Logan's discovery of the gold-rich Cromwell Reef that made Bendigo famous. Despite the impending shift toward quartz reef mining, of the 52 claims being worked by mid-1870 only 18 were quartz claims, the rest still being alluvial.
Cromwell Reef (Logan's Reef / Solway Reef)
Thomas Logan (1836-1897) was born in St Bees, Cumberland. After the gold rush in Victoria he came to Otago and worked as an alluvial miner. In 1863, Logan began to prospect the lower slopes of Bendigo Hill, searching for quartz reefs from which the alluvial gold had been liberated. Logan located several lines of gold-bearing reefs, including the rich Cromwell (or Logan's) Reef. Unlike alluvial mining, quartz mining was a costly enterprise and a lack of capital prevented Logan from developing his reefs. It was not until Julian Coates reported the reefs in 1865 to a group of Dunedin businessmen that the Bendigo Quartz Mining Company was formed in order to mine Logan's finds. The generally held belief at this point is that Logan felt the businessmen were treating him unfairly, and he subsequently led them to poor ground causing them to eventually withdrawal from the project. This version of events is largely based on the limited data sources that were available to J. C. Parcell, as documented in his book Heart of the Desert. A more recent revision of events, based on a more balanced review of the available literature, suggests that Logan did not swindle the businessmen. Instead, it is quite possible that the inexperience of the mining company was the reason for the Dunedin syndicate's demise. In any event, the Bendigo Quartz Mining Company was only to last a brief four months, ceasing operations in mid-1866.
It was not until July 1868 that Logan was able to find appropriate investment to restart work on the reefs he had found. Together with William John 'Jack' Garrett, Brian 'Charcoal Joe' Hebden and George Goodger, he formed the Cromwell Quartz Mining Company. They purchased a 12-head stamper battery and water wheel from a defunct Hindon mining company, and erected it at the mouth of Bendigo Gorge as The Solway Battery. The initial returns were a substantial from the first ten days work. Vincent Pyke, Warden of the goldfields, later described the Cromwell Reef 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.
A new gold rush began, with Bendigo and Logantown at its centre, while Cromwell developed new prosperity. Thomas Logan sold his shares in the Cromwell Company for £15,000 in 1875.
In December 1878, the Solway Battery was moved up the hill to the main shaft of the mine so that the ore could be processed on location. The defunct Aurora Battery in Aurora Creek was purchased to add to a new 20-stamper battery which was christened "Matilda" after George Goodger's daughter. It was driven by a water turbine and by an eighteen-horsepower steam engine, fuelled with coal from Bannockburn. Poor returns and industrial problems saw the mine close in 1884. A new company drove a -deep shaft (No.2 Shaft) into a different part of the reef and the battery was reopened in 1886. It closed again because of poor returns in about 1900. Ten stamps were sold and shifted to form the Come in Time Battery, where they remain intact to this day.
In all, the Cromwell Reef was said to have produced gold to the value of £500,000 by 1887. All that remains of the Matilda Battery today are the stone and wooden footings and some corrugated iron scraps.
Aurora Reef