The New Zealand Gold Rush! Quiz | Oceania

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Although the discovery never resulted in a rush, gold was found in New Zealand fairly soon after the Treaty of Waitangi was signed. What year was that?

Answer: 1842

Gold was found - in rather small quantities, it must be admitted - on the Coromandel Peninsula in 1842.

2. Where was gold first discovered in the South Island?

Answer: Collingwood

Again, the amount of gold found never really came to anything. The Collingwood discovery was in the early 1850s, and no one got very excited about it.

3. Where was gold first discovered in Otago? For those of you simply guessing, Otago was where the main "rush" occurred during the 1860s.

Answer: Otago Peninsula

The find on Otago Peninsula, again very small, was geologically atypical. No one is quite sure why there was any gold there at all!

4. What was the name of the location where gold in large quantities was first discovered in Otago?

Answer: Gabriel's Gully

Gabriel's Gully wasn't so much of a gully as a reasonably broad stream-cut valley. But I suppose the alliteration stuck! Within two months of the discovery, there were 11,000 people living and working in what had been a valley uninhabited by anything except a few sheep ...

5. When the discovery of gold at the Tuapeka was announced, Dunedin nearly emptied as people rushed to the new goldfield. How was the announcement actually made?

Answer: A letter to the editor of the "Otago Witness" newspaper

Read did write to the Provincial Superintendent to officially announce his find, but obviously felt that this wasn't enough. I've never quite understood why he chose to write a letter to the editor of the "Otago Witness" to make his find public. As a veteran of the Victorian goldfields, he must have known what would happen.

But perhaps that's why he did it! There's probably a little bit of the anarchist in any gold prospector.

6. By August 1861 most of the good "ground" at the Tuapeka had been claimed and newcomers were forced to work for existing miners or to look further afield. To try to clear the way, one rather foolish man falsely announced the discovery of a new and lucrative goldfield some distance away. Hundreds abandoned their claims and left for the new "goldfield". Where was it?

Answer: Mount Valpy

He was a fool; it took less than two weeks for people to realise that they'd been "had" and come back to the Tuapeka looking for the culprit. He was happily panning in the gully without an apparent care in the world. History records that he was tied to a cart and whipped soundly, but not what happened to him after that.

7. The next great real rush was in mid-1862 to the Dunstan. Two American prospectors, Hartley and Reilly, dumped 87lb of gold on the desk of the gold receiver in Dunedin in August, and the news rapidly got out. What was the name of the river that ran through The Dunstan?

Answer: Molyneux

The Clutha River was called the Molyneux for most of its length at that time. This appears to have been due to confusion about whether the Clutha (as it was known in its lower reaches) was in fact the same river as the Molyneux River, because no one had travelled its length. Later on, of course, it became the Clutha River exclusively. But at the time, the Dunstan was on the Molyneux!

8. Because of the limited riverside ground available (and the prospectors' inexperience with Otago's geology), prospectors fanned out through the steep and trackless country to the north up the river from the Dunstan looking for more gold. A small group of prospectors found rich pickings on the Arrow River. The township that sprang up eventually became Arrowtown. But what was it called initially?

Answer: Fox's

William Fox, John Callaghan and several others prospected the Arrow in late 1862, fed and transported across the river by W.H. Rees who was the stationholder. There was no law in the area, and Fox initially made up his own, self-advantaging rules for the new goldfield.

He was a big man, and few dared to challenge him. They worked in secret for some weeks and did very well. It didn't last, though, and soon the secret was out. The Arrow was rushed. Well, you knew that, didn't you?

9. It turned out that there was gold everywhere in the Wakatipu region, but that region had definite boundaries. The Crown Range, to the east, appeared to be the "gold limit" on that side, and the lake itself limited the auriferous region to the west. But there was one, sole, exception. What river on the eastern watershed of the Crown Range turned out to be a goldfield?

Answer: Cardrona

Although the Cardrona field wasn't as rich as many others, some of the largest gold nuggets ever found on the Otago Goldfields were found in the valley. Prospectors described picking up gold from among the stones beside the Cardrona, some of them as big as men's fists! Even odder, people used the Cardrona Valley-Crown Summit-Crown Terrace route to get to the Arrow for many months without anybody even noticing the golden bounty strewn along the way.

10. Gold was first discovered in the Shotover River by a shearer working for W.H. Rees on Queenstown Bay. Despite promising not to, this worthy and his mate slipped away on Sundays to try their luck. The man - and the spot - are remembered even today, because the place he struck gold is still called Arthur's Point. But what was his full name?

Answer: Thomas Arthur

Arthur and his mate, Harry Redfern had been hired at the Nokomai by Rees' agent, Alfred Duncan, to shear the station sheep. At the time they were so poor and ragged that when they heard there were women at the station they refused to enter the house until Duncan had found them each a pair of trousers and a shirt.

When they announced that they'd found gold and that they wanted to be released from their verbal contract, Rees, generous as usual, not only let them go but gave them provisions to be going on with.

11. It is said that the Shotover was the richest ever gold river up until the Klondike rush forty years later. It was certainly just as inaccessible as the Klondike, if not as cold in winter. But the very richest stream of all was one of the Shotover's tributaries, up near the northern limit of the Wakatipu goldfield. What was its name?

Answer: Skipper's Creek

The creek was named after a sea captain, Skipper Duncan, who was simply poking around in the upper Shotover area. He saw gold gleaming in the sand on the bottom of the creek and told some diggers, who promptly rushed it, of course. It was rich beyond belief. Diggers were washing up 100 ounces to the pan in the early days. Today, the whole area has been changed beyond recognition by the more industrial approaches to mining used later, but there's still gold there. I raised the colour in Skipper's Creek using my mother's enamel dish when I was a boy.

12. The West Coast Gold Rush, which began in 1864, started off as more of a West Coast Gold Dawdle following the discovery of payable quantities of gold in a tributary of the Taramakau River. What was the name of the tributary?

Answer: Greenstone Creek

Gold prospecting, and particularly mining, was a completely different proposition on the West Coast. The gold was extremely fine and hard to retrieve. Many lost their shirts because they didn't manage to learn how to deal with the different ground. But those that did learn, made an awful lot of money. And usually lost it again!

13. Although the West Coast rush was slow to start, by Christmas of 1865 there were some 29,000 miners (about 12% of the entire European population of New Zealand at the time) working the creeks and beaches of the West Coast. Hokitika became the centre of coastal activity and had a richly-deserved reputation for lawlessness and riotous living. This was at least partly because of the sheer number of hotels plying the miners with alcohol and other entertainment. Approximately how many hotels did Hokitika have at the end of 1865?

Answer: 70

Despite the riotous living, the West Coast goldfields were a good deal more "sophisticated" than the Otago fields. The conditions were, if anything, even more difficult than in Otago, and gold recovery techniques had to become much more sophisticated, particularly in the northern areas where the gold was often embedded in quartz and on the beach claims, where gold recovery was an art rather than a science.

14. Today, the gold rush town of Reefton is a rather sleepy and pleasant place where you can sip latte or cappuccino and slap sandflies while taking a break in your journey from the Coast to Nelson. But it wasn't always called Reefton. What was the town's first name?

Answer: Quartzopolis

And they're still mining there, but it's heavy industry rather than individuals working up to their waists in water. Reefton is proud of its golden heritage and is definitely worth a visit.

15. There are (currently) two large commercial gold mines operating in New Zealand. One is Martha Hill, in the North Island. The other is 60 miles from Dunedin. What is the name of the area?

Answer: Macraes

There's very little romance in the modern operation at Macraes. It's a matter of 50-ton trucks and a mill a quarter of a mile long and chemical extraction of the gold.

Source: Author Capfka

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor bloomsby before going online.
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The New Zealand Gold Rush! Trivia Quiz

The 19th century was the "gold rush century". New Zealand and Australia certainly had their gold rushes in the 19th Century. What do you know - or can you guess - about the New Zealand Gold Rush?

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