Fosicking

We've got gold fever look at the real estate we were able to purchase with our prospecting find.

It's not a yellow brick or gold road for those immigrants who traveled the long distances to take part in the 1860's gold rush. The land road you see here wasn't completed until 1965. 

European miners first started in Otago and then moved to the west coast leaving the chinese miners to continue panning for gold. Their accommodation was little more than a tin or wood hut to see them through the extremely cold winters. They were so small Sarah could not lay down in one. The miners general store only closed down in 1926 when the chinese owner died. Recently the New Zealand government, belatedly, apologised to the Chinese miners families for their mistreatment. 

Chinese miners settlement in Arrowtown. 

We managed find the assayers office in town he had to brush the cob webs off the scales (or did he?) as this is what somebody had managed to buy with their finds. 

They are still finding gold now in fact in the office we saw four gold nuggets that had been found as recently as 2013. They were all oddly shaped and worth as much as $20,000 each which does equate to much when you see the work that's needed to extract it.