Gold! In December 1861 the cry went up, and the wild tussock country at Waipori in Otago was soon a magnet for gold diggers, shopkeepers, publicans and bullock drivers.
In May 1861 Gabriel Read had found gold near Lawrence, not far from Waipori, in the gully that now bears his name. This prompted a rapid influx of people to Otago, many coming from the diggings in Australia. Men poured out of Dunedin to try their luck, and by early August some 2,000 men were camped at the gully. More swarmed into the wider Tuapeka field, and in the second half of 1861 Otago’s population rose from less than 13,000 to more than 30,000.
Prospectors explored further afield, and on 17 December 1861 a digger named O’Hara and his party found gold in the upper Waipori Valley along Lammerlaw Creek, a tributary of the Waipori River. The Waipori rush was on. Just three days later a constable reported 400 miners working on the banks of Lammerlaw Creek, and soon after a town of tents and stores had formed. Considerable quantities of gold were being removed.
The initial Waipori settlement was in a very poor site, and soon another township was formed on level ground a few kilometres down Lammerlaw Creek where it met the Waipori River. This, first known as Waipori Junction, later became Waipori town.
As the Waipori goldfield developed different means of prospecting were used and many mining techniques were pioneered here — quartz crushing, water-powered dredges, underground mining and paddock dredging. The largest gold nugget then found in Otago — weighing 13 ounces or 400 grams — was found in the early days of the field.
Waipori earned a reputation as a tough goldfield. It had no natural food resources and little timber. The harsh climate — high rainfall, hot summers and severe winters —drove many miners away.
But despite the hardship, Waipori quickly grew and by its peak in 1865 had 1,000 men, 11 hotels and three ginger beer manufacturers. Around this time it also had 40 stores, four bakeries, two butcher shops and a rugby team. The population dropped in the late 1800s, but increased to 7,000 in 1901 during a gold dredge boom.
The gold rush ended for good when the town was submerged below Lake Mahinerangi in 1924, after the Waipori River was raised for hydroelectricity generation. Read more about this hydro project here.
Read more about the gold field, and relics you can see today, [here].
There’s little left of the town now, but at its peak Waipori was a bustling community. Read more about it [here], and the stories of some of its prominent residents [here].
Many men from Waipori served in the First World War, and six did not return. Their stories are told here.
The year 1865 was the height of the gold rush. It was famous for a darker event — the murder of innkeeper Richard Atkinson. Read more about this ‘whodunnit’ [here].
One part of Waipori escaped the floodwaters, thanks to the pioneers’ foresight in locating the cemetery on a hill above the town. [Find out] who was buried there, and about current preservation projects.