Good advice from Kiwikeith regarding Reefton over Ross - strangely enough a friend who is into gold mining, my son and I were just perving the sites around reefton on Google Earth today. I worked over thataway once in the days of the NZFS and had planned to go back to do some serious prospecting but never made it though made three passing visits in the last ten years.
Now the first two times I was over there I tried to get my yuppymobile - a Toyota Surf up the Big River Road but the road was too rough for it and I had a full load of camping gear aboard so didnt take any risks that might have left me up a creek without a paddle and I dont think Insurance companies roadside rescue extends to out of the way places. Now I have to admit that I didnt find any gold BUT....
I have here a map of a creek given to me in the mid 1970s by an old chap who had worked over there and he said there was really good gold in a creek up thataway but for the life of me I cant find the map. I also saw some great gold that another fellow found somewhere between Reefton and Big River.
I also remember a bloke used to go up into the forest at Totara Flat in the late 1960s when I was there and come back with half an ounce after work which I think he donated to the Reeftons Working Mens Club or some similar organisation for their raffle on, I think, Friday nights.. - though I am not certain about these details as I was never there.
Yessir I think around Reefton is well worthy of poking about but one warning - I felt a bit intimidated by a number of Sleezeballs parked on the side of the road away up the Big River track - Easter time - sort of about the time the farmers are finishing their harvest...need I say more! I was also shadowed when I took my family up into the forest at Granville Terrace to show them where I worked. A bloke who looked like the King of Scumsuckers shadowed us and parked a hundred yards or so down the road when ever we parked and when we went to look at likely spots he would get out of his car and go into the bush down the road, Assumedly to keep an eye on us and what we found...not gold! The odd squarish burnt spot on the side of the road with glass fragments and the one remaining burnt out car were not indicators that cars in the area had tendencies to suffer short circuits either. It all comes down to simple mathematics, Scumsucker + Burnt out cars = Nefarious activities. Its a great pity really as it was a grand place back when I worked there with fantastic people, the Heather Bell Hotel where the only beer sold was Westbrew.
To digress a bit I have just remembered my first night at Totara Flat - I went to the pub and asked for DB "We havent got it" so I asked for Waikato Brew 22 and he looked at me as though I had escaped from somewhere "Havent got it" so I asked for Speights "Havent got it - By this time my brains getting a hernia trying to think of something else but finally I asked for I think it was Harleys of Nelson but got the same answer "Havent got it" - well by this time I was beginning to think that maybe it was an ice cream parlour in disguise but none the less asked what did he have "Westbrew" - I had never heard of it but in the end had to develop a taste for it or go teetotal. I remember their Westbrew Stout. Some shit took the first bottle I ever bought, gave me a wicked grin and tapped the bottom of the bottle with a coin and it erupted...quite spectacular except that I paid for it. I got him back by piddling all over the bonnet of his car...that was forty years ago and I had forgotten all that until now! Great country and good people once.
Edited by user Friday, 18 November 2011 10:32:01 PM(UTC)
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