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Clyde's History
The
trials of Earnscleugh
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Earnscleugh station, taking in much of the Old Man Range, is among the oldest of the runs of Central Otago. A Dunedin magistrate, Alfred Cheetham Strode (born Alfred Cheetham he took the additional surname to collect considerable inheritance), acquired the run in 1860 and went into partnership with a young Scot, William Fraser. When the rushes came, Fraser himself did not go after gold. In his own words he was "too busy doing other things"; instead, while he supplied the miners, he continued with improvements to the run.
The Rev. C.S. Ross described Fraser as "a thoughtful reader of books and a shrewd observer of passing events". But Fraser, who had married Strode's daughter, in a moment less than shrewd introduced rabbits to Earnscleugh. These ate out feed, and when the snowfalls of 1895 cost Fraser half his stock, the bankrupt run reverted to the State.
Carrying 100 rabbits to the acre, leaving scarcely any feed for sheep, Earnscleugh was taken up in 1901 by Stephen Spain and restocked with sheep from Morven Hills station at sixpence (5c) a head. Spain also bought an old brewery and began canning rabbits for export. It was he who built the present Earnscleugh homestead, "Spain's Folly", a grandiose mansion patterned on a hacienda he had seen in South America. The Government took back part of the run after the 1914-18 war to settle servicemen as orchardists, and the run was still in poor shape when it was acquired by one M.F. Mulvena. With stock numbers pegged and a vigorous policy to stamp out rabbits, Mulvena brought profitability back to the largest run in Central. Outbuildings on the 29,920-hectare run mirror the style of the castellated brick homestead. (The homestead is almost concealed by trees when viewed from Earnscleugh Rd, and may best be seen by turning down Laing Rd. 4.5 km S on the far side of the river. Signposted on Earnscleugh Rd.)
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Hartley
and Reilly's bags of gold:
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Pioneer
pastoralists opened up the hinterland but it was for gold miners to
establish the first towns in Central. Just as gold was becoming
progressively more difficult to win, and the miners more discouraged, the
American Horatio Hartley and the Irishman Christopher Reilly found fortune
in the Clutha. Working quietly through the winter of 1862 and supplied
from Earnscleugh station they contrived to keep their success even from
William Fraser, so that when they departed for Dunedin the pair pretended
to have abandoned the area.
Consternation reigned in the Otago capital when the two arrived at the
Treasury with bags of gold weighing 87 pounds. The alert Gold Receiver
deduced from the worn and scaly appearance of the gold flakes that they
had come from near Lake Wanaka, and when confronted with this the pair,
who had hoped to keep their secret for longer, agreed to reveal their
source. After some hard bargaining the Provincial Council offered a reward
of £2,000 on condition that the two men return to the scene to point out
their discoveries, and that no less than 16,000 ounces be produced from
the field within three months. (The reward was not to cost the Council a
penny as it would be covered by revenue from the gold.) Fortune-seekers
flocked out of Dunedin. Ill-equipped, ill-prepared and knowing little of
the rigours before them, they hurried inland. William Fraser, in Dunedin
when the news broke, rode furiously towards Earnscleugh, expecting to be
well ahead of the rush, but as he rested on the verandah at Galloway he
saw to his astonishment a large group fording the Manuherikia near
Moutere.
Of the two prospectors, Hartley alone returned to the scene of triumph,
there to find the impatient diggers suspicious and resentful. Here were no
shafts or paddocks; no trace that a considerable amount of gold had ever
been won. Moreover the river was running high and Hartley, unable to get
any gold out, needed police protection from the increasingly hostile
crowd. The next morning the river was lower and Hartley was able to wade
in and by blind stabbing with a shovel into a shoal bar, swiftly prove
that gold was in the river in great quantities. Hartley, with other
Californian miners, showed the diggers how to work unfamiliar river claims
with a technique that involved the jabbing of long-handled shovels to
scoop up river wash. (A memorial, marking the locality of the find, stands
on Highway 8 just south of Cromwell.)
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The
town blows down
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The town blows down: Hartley and Reilly were soon assured of their reward as the riches unfolded. Within three months some 30,000 ounces had been deposited at the Treasury at Dunedin; by the year's end, 70,000.
The first camp was at Muttontown, where the bush-ranger-to-be, Philip Levy, had the first store. Muttontown was so called as William Fraser brought his sheep there to slaughter them for the diggers (the name persists to the east of Clyde).
The runholders were surprisingly patient with the diggers who traipsed over their holdings, disturbing stock and occasionally helping themselves. Watson Shennan recalled that the price of mutton did not exceed a shilling a pound. "One reason I may give for the moderate price was that the squatters' sheep were looked upon as common property and disappeared in a marvellous way and at a much faster rate than it was possible for their legs to carry them." Timber, too, was scarce, and one digger, in need of wood to build a gold cradle, helped himself to a privy door. An outraged runholder stormed into Clyde but could find no trace of the door as it had already been put to use on the river.
Canvas towns concentrated on the sites of Clyde and Alexandra. With January of 1863 came a violent summer storm; dust and gravel funnelled through the Cromwell Gorge with such fury that even Clyde's courthouse was wrecked. The miners turned to more permanent materials to replace their tents, and a number of Clyde's stone and wooden buildings date from the spate of substantial building that followed this visitation. With more comfortable buildings came a lessening in the privations endured by the 30,000 to 40,000 diggers who toiled along the Clutha. The early gold was running out by 1864 so groups were formed to provide the capital needed to exploit payable ground, to construct water races and to purchase sluicing gear. In turn, ground sluicing, hydraulic sluicing and dredging were all carried on with considerable success.
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Vincent
County and Vincent Pyke
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Vincent County and Vincent Pyke: Dictatorial, of comic appearance and with a talent for sustained invective, Vincent Pyke (1827-94) made his mark both in Victoria and in Otago. He enjoyed such a degree of popularity that an opponent's ironical suggestion was taken seriously and the body of which he was first chairman was named Vincent County.
After time on the Victorian diggings of Bendigo he entered politics there to hold a variety of posts as an elected representative in the Legislative Council of Victoria. For health reasons he visited Otago in 1862 while still a councillor, and he was induced to accept the post of Secretary to the Otago goldfields. Profiting from his Australian experience (he was author of a Victorian Mining Companies Act) he drafted regulations to assist the orderly development of the goldfields and travelled widely to lecture to the miners.
Elected to parliament, he advanced the cause of Central with such passion that he was suspended by the Speaker; he pleaded for a railway, for the completion of the Haast Pass Road, and attacked the manner in which leasehold properties were auctioned, one that often enabled the original large runholder to obtain the freehold. If he was once hanged in effigy at Cromwell for giving his casting vote (and so the county seat) to Clyde, in later years he was regularly plied with presentations by satisfied supporters.
Pyke, a lifelong journalist, edited several newspapers and wrote as well as popular novels a definitive History of the Early Gold Discoveries in Otago (1887).
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"Feraud the Fraud"
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The change from harnessing water to sluice away topsoil to using it to feed the parched countryside marks the turning point in the development of Central Otago. Credit for being the first to irrigate is generally given to the Frenchman, Jean Désiré Feraud (fl. 1870), or Old Fraud as he was locally known. In about 1864 he used water from a mining race to irrigate his parched Monte Christo holding on the outskirts of Clyde. Elected mayor of Clyde in 1866, he was intent on seeing that both miners and farmers were provided with sufficient water, but his popularity slumped when he discovered that the town's water right itself was invalid. (A municipality was then not empowered to hold water rights under the Goldfields Act.) With an eye to the main chance Feraud promptly resigned and claimed the Clyde water right for himself.
Previously a prosperous miner (Frenchmans Point near Alexandra is named after him), Feraud proved as successful as an orchardist, growing grapes, peaches and apricots and selling wines and cordials as far away as Dunedin to the astonishment of those who considered Central's soil dry and useless. (Two of his invariably blue wine bottles are in the local museum.)
As miners found gold progressively more elusive they turned increasingly to fruit-growing. No sooner were water races abandoned for mining purposes than the rights were taken over by prospective orchardists.
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