Page:Gillespies Beach Beginnings • Alexander (2010).pdf/18

 5-mile. (Philip’s mother was Bessie Chesterman, a descendant of Edith Sidwell cum Williams cum Chesterman whose link is outlined in the family chart on the first page of this publication.)

The Okarito correspondent of the West Coast Times reported in April, 1866 “that excellent gold was being found at Gillespie’s Beach, the gold being highly auriferous, with workings extending over three miles in length”. Miners were said to total 200 persons. “At the end of that month, the rush was on, not to the sandy beaches this time but into the scrub where the ground was pegged out for a very long distance. Miners were reported to be making ten to twenty pounds a week.”

When the readily accessible gold gave out at the beach, miners stripped the land to considerable depths to follow the rich seams of gold dust deposited by the sea in earlier times. Water races were erected to service the sluice-boxes and some of these races carried water over long distances.

Prospectors were required to register and pay a fee for a Miners Right, which enforced guidelines as to size, pegging, duration, conditions of working, tunnelling and drainage, as well as water rights and the construction of water races.

By June, 1866, Gillespie’s Beach had eleven stores, two butcheries and two bakeries catering for the needs of 650 men, their supplies coming by sea mainly to the port of Okarito and by pack-horses along the beach. A few small coastal vessels entered the Cook River to the south of the beach. Estimates of the population at any one time could vary simply because diggers didn’t stay long at any one place if they weren’t making the equivalent of good wages. By mid 1867 however, fewer than 500 remained.

Miners constructed a tunnel through Gillespie’s Point north of the beach to avoid the dangerous seas around this Bluff, thus avoiding dependence on the tides. The tunnel still exists but is no longer