Quartz adventures in a remote Central Otago valley

Abstract

In the headwaters of Bendigo Creek is the Rise and Shine Basin, a beautiful valley with a confusing pattern of sluice scarps, mine shafts and adits, mullock mounds, dry water races, and the detritus of 85 years of mining. A comprehensive study of the area's archaeology and its mining history yields a fascinating farrago of mining successes and failures, wild dreams and harsh reality, revealing the Rise and Shine area to be a place where a golden fortune remained elusive, but where assorted small groups of miners wrestled with an unusual geology, a harsh environment, capriciously patchy gold deposition and, as they did, made this remote valley their home for nearly nine decades. This paper surveys the mining industry of the Rise and Shine Basin, especially in terms of its remaining archaeology.