Arrowtown and the Gold Rush

Back in the day Arrowtown was a little more than a hunting ground for local tribes. That all changed when in 1862 that precious little stuff called, “gold” was found by Jack Tewa, a Maori shearer. There is a bit of controversy about this finding. Some accounts say it wasn’t Jack Tewa but Bill Fox that discovered gold first, and even named the town “Fox’s”.

No matter who started the rush it was on, and by January 1863 12,000 ounces had been hauled out of the area. (roughly $15M in today’s market!) Oh yeah, there were also 1,500 miners now living in the area.

By 1865 a lot of the gold had been removed and prospecting became harder. The Otago Provincial Gov’t decided it would re-vitalize the area by offering an incentive to Chinese miners to lure them away from the Western goldfields. It worked. By 1874 there were ~3,600 Chinese living in Otago, some settling in Arrowtown.  The town had a mostly male population housed in several small buildings along with shops storing and selling supplies, a large social hall for those Friday night dances, and yes, an opium den.

As time went on the gold dwindled out so the town turned to farming. Keep in mind that most of these immigrants were not welcomed by the local citizens so they kept pretty much to themselves and only ventured into town to sell their produce. Sound familiar????? And these were the “legal” immigrants!

Just a short drive from Queenstown, today Arrowtown is a historical site where visitors can walk along the Arrow river and see the homes and shops made of mud brick, some stone and corrugated iron. On the “must see” list is Ah Lum’s store, a prominent building as you enter the Chinese village.

In pretty good shape for late 1800’s

Thatched roof versus steel

AAHHHHH Loo (get it? Ah Lum versus Ah Loo!)

Or if you’re more into the tourist thing, you can walk along Buckingham street of today’s Arrowtown where there are stores and shops selling busloads of tourists everything from greenstone trinkets to Merino wool sweaters. Most of these buildings date back to late 1800’s to early 1900’s. 

Go ahead, it’ll be fun. I promise I won’t put it on the blog.

Of course, there are also a few pubs. That’s what we were looking for, so we chose The Fork and Tap for some pretty good pub and to give my bride a rest. Good food and a bit of NZ history, fun time. Now I agree, it doesn’t compare to wine tasting but you can’t do that every day. (Who the hell said that? Sure you can!)

Back to Queenstown and tomorrow a walkabout.