gold panning Buller Gorge Adventure and Heritage Park

History
Buller Gorge Swingbridge Adventure and Heritage Park is rich with history, flora and fauna that is a delight to explore.

The General History of the Buller Gorge
From its source at Lake Rotoiti, the Buller River cuts a westward course to reach the Tasman Sea at Westport. The scene of floods, earthquakes, and home to hundreds of transient workers during goldmining times, the Gorge has been a challenge to horsemen, coach drivers, roadmakers and bridge builders.

Maori travellers used the river as a highway and helped early European explorers and goldminers to negotiate the treacherous rapids. today’s road travellers can take time to enjoy the scenery and features between Murchison and Inangahua in a split fraction of the seven weeks it took Thomas Brunner to make the journey in 1847.

Iron Bridge
Built in 1890, the bridge replaced a punt that operated on the river for many years. No longer did the horse and carriage have to board a wooden pontoon that, linked to cables spanning the river, employed the force and angle of the current against its hull to move across the river.
White’s Creek
Goldmining licenses have been issued for land around here since the 1860’s and small-scale dredging for gold in the Buller river continues today. White’s Creek once boasted a small settlement of tents and shanties. The Newton Hotel (now the Newton Livery) would have provided a welcome night out to compare notes with those working the Newton flat claims.

White’s Creek never grew to the settlement proportions of Lyell, rather it remained an alluvial mining shantytown as hopes held out for the big quartz lead that was never found. Renewed interest in the area surfaced during the late 1920’s when gold rose in value. White’s Creek took on a new lease of life with The Buller Diversion Goldmining Company Ltd.

The White Creek Fault
Seventeen people died in the 1929 Murchison Earthquake which occured in mid-winter and caused many spectacular slips, cut roads and dammed rivers. The quake, of magnitude 7.8, was centred under the White Creek fault where the 4.5m uplift can still be clearly seen.

During the June 17 quake, the gorge reverberated with booming sounds, and people found it impossible to stand as trees and boulders crashed around them. families had to clamber over landslides and through thick mud to get to Murchison.

Gold Analysis

This letter was written by Walter Oldershaw to the miners as an analysis of the gold in the Buller River. It concludes that there is a substantial quantity of gold to be found. Oldershaw included his calculations that prove interesting reading, and, tantalisingly, “had not travelled far down the river from their source”. Despite the frantic efforts of the early goldminers, no one discovered the mother lode.

Buller Gorge Goldmining History
Hard-To-Get-Gold
With every gravel beach and rock bar on one side of the Buller River was worked for gold in the 19th century, the lack of a road meant that the side on which Buller Gorge Swingbridge Adventure and Heritage Park resides was mostly untouched. Just a few daring diggers ventured across in boats or picked their way down the gorge from Maruia Valley. Once they reached the peninsula they made the most of their opportunity as shafts, tunnels and stacked tailing stones on their gold claims testify.


The construction of the first bridge, some time around the start of the 20th century, not only made the peninsula easier to reach but also enabled them to pipe in much-needed water to accelerate the speed of the gold-winning. Grand schemes were even mooted to work the bed of the Buller, including scooping it out with a giant dragline and dewatering it via a diversion tunnel through the neck of the peninsula.

Sluice and Stack
With a supply of high pressure water, miners were able to employ their favourite method of working – hydraulic sluicing. powerful jets of water were played onto terraces, cutting them down and washing them away. Large rocks were rolled aside and neatly stacked while gold-bearing gravels passed into timber sluice boxes. Gold was trapped by wooden bars. Lighter stones carried on down a deeper channel called the tail race to the river.


When the process was completed, nozzles and undamaged pipes were taken to other claims, unsound pipes were left to rust and original native plant species gradually regenerated.

Biddy of the Buller
One of the gorge’s most famous characters, Biddy lived in the hope that one day she would find the ‘mother lode’ or at least a sizeable chunk from it!

Towards Permanence
A transition from mining to farming that occured on other fields was limited by a shortage of flat land in the gorge. Some who did till the land still needed to supplement their income by working gold claims – including on the peninsula where water was piped across the bridge where unworked ground remained.