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- History
Visitors
from the north
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The itinerant Otago Maori used several routes to the West Coast, particularly the Haast Pass, to reach the greenstone country. Later Maori tended to settle on the coast and the river mouths, but in summer came inland to the lakes on fishing and fowling expeditions. There were small villages at Wanaka and Hawea, but they were essentially camping places.
Then came the raid in 1836 by Te Puoho, Te Rauparaha's lieutenant, who in an inspired outflanking manoeuvre brought his taua (war party) down the West Coast and over the Haast Pass to take the settlements here completely by surprise - 'the first indications that the local Maoris had of the presence of the invaders was the swish of the mere and the savage cries of a band athirst for the taste of blood.' Small kainga around the lake were overwhelmed and Te Puoho's men, starved of protein during their arduous trek, slew and ate two plump girls, Rumuri and Pipiki. One boy escaped from his captors to warn his relatives living at the outlet to Hawea, some of whom ambushed the party coming to attack them, while the others made good their escape over the Lindis Pass and down to the east coast. Triumphant, Te Puoho continued south only to encounter first victory and then disaster at Tuturau (see Mataura). For the Pakeha the raid had favourable consequences. The Maori who had fled their kainga never returned, leaving the land deserted for the settlers to claim without dispute.
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Chalmers
visits
Looking for sheep country and guided by the ageing Reko, chief at Tuturau, the 23-year-old Nathaniel Chalmers in 1853 became the first Pakeha to see the lakes. From the Nokomai he saw the distant waters of Lake Wakatipu; he crossed the Kawarau by way of the 'natural bridge', and he followed the Pisa flats up to Wanaka and Hawea. Chalmers, stricken with dysentery, had little energy with which to enjoy or even take note of his achievements. Reko wanted to take him on over the Lindis Pass, but the Pakeha was too weak and so the little group returned to the coast on a mokihi (rush raft) which they sailed down the Clutha to the sea. Even in his old age Chalmers could still vividly remember sweeping through the awesome gorges on either side of Cromwell.
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A
grand view
A grand view: It was left for John Turnbull Thomson to be the first recorded European to come through the Lindis Pass. In December 1857 he stood on the summit of the mountain he named Grandview. From there he marvelled at the prospect, and named, among others, Mt Aspiring (which a later surveyor renamed Perspiring, a joke that for some years was perpetuated on maps) and Mt Pisa (as a rock on the ridge reminded him of the leaning tower).
Not long after, Thomson was followed to the crest of Grandview by John McLean, who viewed the classic scene not for its splendour but for its grazing potential. 'Big' McLean claimed his vast Morven Hills run and others were quick to follow. The Wanaka runs were taken up before the end of 1858.
With the Central Otago gold rushes came an insatiable demand for timber. The lake was a source of timber rare in Central so that bushmen were quick to cut its trees and float sawn lengths down the Clutha to the embryonic townships of Cromwell and Clyde - a journey as perilous as it was profitable. |
Gold
at Cardrona
Gold at Cardrona: Rumours of Fox's party working secretly led many fortune-seekers to join in the sport of 'hunting the Fox' (see Arrowtown). It was such a group that stumbled on gold in the Cardrona Valley in 1862. Though the Cardrona was at once overshadowed by the rushes to the Shotover and then to the Arrow, hundreds of diggers were ferried across the Clutha by whaleboat at Albert Town, a busy little ferry with several stores to serve the prospectors who swarmed over Central.
There were no sensational returns in the Cardrona Valley, which was as often used simply as a stopping-place by prospectors travelling from Cromwell to the diggings on the Arrow and the Shotover. The principal claims, the Gin and Raspberry (the party's favourite drink), the Pirate and the Homeward Bound, were all worked by shafts some 10 metres below the surface, and each paid good wages. Some made their homes here until in 1867 there was a major exodus to the newly opened diggings on the West Coast. Chinese filled the vacuum, but by the late 1870s both European and Chinese were drifting away.
Of those who remained was one Joe, a tunneller. One day in 1877 a trooper rode over Mt Pisa and asked for him, an incident that gave rise to rumours that Joe, known to have rich relations in Britain, had inherited £500. By the end of the week the sum had grown to £500,000 and that Saturday night Joe and his friends (comprising most of the town) drank the town dry - in anticipation and all on credit. When the truth finally dawned it transpired that Joe was to be a deputy returning officer at the local election booth, and the trooper had only been trying to deliver a document to this effect from the Registrar at Clyde. The revellers in their frenzy seem to have celebrated the departing glories of a dying town, for the spring of 1878 brought a flood that dealt a final deathblow to the community. |
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