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It was on May 18th, 1867, that the word was sent flashing through the New Zealand telegraph wires, that a rich find of gold was discovered out on the flats on the West Coast and about eight miles on the south side of Westport.

The party of men who found the first gold numbered three or four, and the principal one was a nigger by the name of Addison. This small party was sinking a prospecting shaft near the foot of the hill, just behind where the schoolmaster’s house stands at present.

When the find was made known, then miners from the Hokitika, Grey, Otago, Nelson, and Australian gold fields came long in hundreds to try their luck in the new fields for fortunes. The place was immediately named Addison’s Flat, after the discoverer, although the Maori name for that township was Whenua-Pakura, which means red earth. The reason for the Maor’s calling it by that name is because of the red cement that is so plentiful out there.

The great rush took place about the latter end of May, and the first diggings started on the Westport side of Dirty Mary’s Creek.

Within a few weeks, there was population in Addison’s of about 6,000 and for weeks the whole of the flat from Bald Hill on the north, to the Giant’s Grave on the south, was nothing but a city of canvas tents, and the place a living mass of miners with a pick, shovel and dish, fossicking all day long for the gold that was somewhat plentiful on the surface in that year. The white moleskin pants and red flannel shirt and scarf instead of a pair of braces, was the digger’s uniform. A fine stamp of men they were, similar to those of whom Bracken has written:

The digger’s shirt was freedom’s badge
 * Beneath it, Honor’s glow

Lit up a generous manly heart
 * In dear old Bendigo.

I have in my possession an old New Zealand geography book that was printed in London in 1869. When the book was first put in the printing press in England in that year, the return of the population of Addison’s was not to hand, but it gives a record of other towns in the Nelson district and the population was as follows: Nelson, 5,652; Westport 1,500; Charleston 2,255 Brighton 1,203 and Cobden 727.

Within a few weeks of the rush, as per usual, like other gold fields, hotels were set up, about the flat. They were called shanties in those days on the diggings, and I am informed that at Addison’s there were about forty licensed to retail spirituous liquors.