Bright Fine Gold: Stories of the New Zealand Gold Fields

The New Zealand goldfields were little different. Into the roadless areas hurried the diggers. Overnight, canvas and shack towns spang up where before there had been only virgin bush and tussock. The earth was hacked about, tthe riverbanks suddenly grew a lattice-work of flumes and races. Some struck it rich, others threw it all in and limped home, some drowned in treacherous rivers, a few were murdered; but for a few raucous years in Otago, the West Coast, Coromandel and, briefly, elsewhere, rough men dwelt in rough places that now – if they have survived at all – show only relics of a romantic history. ISBN 13: 9780589007720 vi