On 23 December 1865 the first Chinese goldminers arrived in Aotearoa. They brought with them food, equipment and hard-won knowledge from the gold fields of Australia. Scouting locations with the best potential and then working already abandoned claims, these early miners won large amounts of gold. Their secret was teamwork and a deep understanding of water management.

There were only five miners in the Chinese scouting party that arrived at Port Chalmers in December 1865.^[1] Their job was to assess the wealth of Otago’s fields before sending word back to friends and relatives in Victoria. The party headed north to Blackstone Hill, and their findings must have been positive as eight more Chinese miners arrived from Melbourne the next month.^[2] By mid-1866 there were over 50 of them. Many of them^[3] were working the briefly exposed river flats of the Clutha River.^[4] In the spring, they moved across Central Otago and by year’s end there were well established groups around Lawrence, Waipori, Alexandra, Clyde and Cromwell. Some even tried out the Wakatipu and Shotover regions.

Ho A Mei: the man who brokered New Zealand's first goldminers
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The men seemed pleased with their move to New Zealand. In the language of the times, a Dunstan correspondent reported this in June 1866:

… The Chinamen appear to be getting on very well in this district [Clyde-Alexandra]; they are all fully employed, either working for others or on their own account. The river beaches are their favorite spots for work. They have tried numbers of other places, but the attractiveness of plenty of water and plenty of wash-dirt (kim-di), appears to possess a fascination too irresistible to be foregone.

The headman, Ah Teng, informs me, that their smallest earnings have been 3 dwts [pennyweights – 20 dwts to an ounce] per day for two men. They, however, anticipate much better times when the river reaches a low level; and appear fully alive to the fact of the large quantity of gold that will then be extracted. They complain a little of the cold nights, but at the same time, they do not consider it any impediment to carrying on work.…

As far as gold-getting goes, they appear very well satisfied. Ah Teng tells me, ‘Plenty of Chinamen come by and bye [sic]. Country much better than Victoria.’ — which place they represent as very poor, and unremunerative.^[5]

The Chinese were by and large welcomed in Dunstan. Property prices increased, European traders appreciated the extra business and claims that had been lying idle were being reworked.^[6] But the welcome was not warm in other parts of the south. According to the Lake Wakatip Mail of 9 May 1866:

The arrival of Chinamen, on the Tuapeka and other diggings in that direction caused some excitement, and strong language was used by the miners as to the propriety of allowing the strangers to work.^[7]

Winning the gold

Goldmining needed steady determination and some skill. In the early days, when alluvial gold lay in stream beds, a gold miner only needed a tin gold-pan (a metal basin with a circular groove), a shovel and a cradle as equipment. Gravel from a likely stream was tested by swirling it in water in the gold pan. Being heavier, the gold gathered in the groove at the bottom as stones and silt were tipped out.

If the pan showed the paydirt (gravel) to be rich enough, the miner used a cradle to ‘sift’ the dirt. The cradle was wooden, had a screen at the bottom and was mounted on two rockers that moved back and forth. Paydirt was shoveled onto the screen on top of the hopper. Water was then poured in as the cradle was rocked. Sand, silt and gold passed through the screen and ran over a sheet of matting. The heavier gold stayed in the matting while the lighter material was swept away.

As one retired miner said, ‘If one man puts three loads through a cradle … we should think they have done a very good day's work.’^[8] A load was 2.3 to 4.5 cubic metres of gravel and sand.

The basic concept could also be scaled up. Larger parties would use a long wooden box-sluice, which had much longer matting and riffles to trap the gold. Two men with shovels and a wheelbarrow might put 7 or 8 loads through a box-sluice in a day, although this required more water.

As the miners’ earnings grew, they sent letters to friends and relatives in Victoria. By the time of the February 1871 Census, the number of Chinese in Otago had grown to 2,576. Most of them were miners and all had come from Victoria.

With the winter of 1870 being particularly severe, Europeans were curious to know how all the new Chinese were managing. After a heavy snowfall, a reporter for the Otago Daily Times visited some Lake District miners to see how they were faring. After the expected conversations about the cost of living and chilblains, he reports:

All united, however, in saying ‘plenty wood, plenty fire, plenty tucker,’ and few complained of the cold. In fact, in that respect they take far more care of themselves than Europeans, and it is astonishing how much clothes they can put on. The strangest feature is that the Victorian and Sydney miners like the change, and say they feel better. By messing together in communities, they have always a good comfortable warm room, and their several tents are kept snug.^[9]

The well-tested system of sending out scouting parties to test new fields yielded results. The Wakatipu district had the richest gold returns, and Chinese were soon in the Kawarau, Shotover and Skippers regions.^[10] Some of the works were substantial. In 1866 two large groups of Chinese took over the Big Beach claims on the Shotover. They built two huge wing dams to shift the river.

By the early 1870s, much of the easily found gold had been worked out. Now large areas of land had to be sluiced with hoses to win gold. This meant that water supplies became vital.

Some larger companies used high-pressure jets to strip off the overburden and wash the paydirt through the sluice. This then emptied into tail races which ensured no gold was lost. However, this required even more water. It also meant damming streams and building and licensing water races. Miners had to construct these themselves or pay for the water from race companies.

Being former farmers and rice growers, the Chinese miners were very good at water management. Supply was controlled by skilfully built dams, weirs, water races, water wheels and pumps: the ‘Chinese pump’, which the Chinese brought to California, had now become standard on all goldfields. Their experience was also applied to building the very long, precisely built tail races. The wash-up, when the matting was cleaned of its gold, revealed the miners’ earnings.^[11]

However, big claims required skill, money and large amounts of labour.  One Chinese group at Big Beach had 40 men. while some Chinese parties at Skippers had two dozen men including the cooks. Usually, these groups were from the same family, village or county. Banding together enabled them to share the costs for staking a claim (or buying it from European miners), water, sluicing equipment and general living. Often, they borrowed money from family or Chinese merchants in Dunedin or Melbourne.

The scale of work is shown in this report from the Shotover River in 1875:

. . . Messrs Sung Chung and Co, are similarly engaged working the [Shotover] river bed. Possessing an abundant water supply . . . this Company have erected some very powerful pumping machinery, which is driven by three water-wheels, two of them of exceedingly large diameter, and which appear to drain the ground effectually . . .

From the nature of the ground  . . . they are compelled to use a very considerable amount of fluming boxes, so as to run their water off from the sluices . . .

[This requires a large amount of timber, and] Messrs Sung Chung and Co. have some very expert bushmen in their party, and who procure all that is required from a forest some six miles further up the Shotover, where they have a saw-pit, and cut their own planks, boards, and quartering, working with the same tools and with all the dexterity of Europeans.^[12]

The correspondent went on to record the amount of timber being used, noting that he passed a landing place where he saw piled up, ‘at least 3,000 feet of sawn timber, mostly boards in about 15ft lengths, besides as many poles of equal dimensions as would make two waggon [sic] loads.’ The next day he returned to see all the timber had been moved to the claim.^[13]

Domestic life in a big camp

A fascinating insight into living arrangements is also provided following a visit to Messrs Ah Kimm and Co, a smaller company of around 23 men.  

. . . everything is equally as methodical and well-ordered as in the workings. First, there is the large cookhouse and dining-room, with its blazing fire, and the chef de cuisine fully employed preparing the various condiments which so delight the Celestial palate. There appeared to be no lack of provisions, which were piled up upon shelves or stowed away in corners. Three dressed sheep hung from the roof, while two goodly-sized pigs, baked whole and brown, and arranged artistically side by side, so that they appeared to be quietly reposing instead of having been cooked, and ready to be cut up and eaten. Everything within the cook house was not only neat and clean, but handily and cleverly arranged, even a minute stream of water was conducted through a pipe from without . . .

Ranged alongside of this capacious cookhouse or dining hall is the Celestial abode or dwelling place. It is a very extensive building, and similarly constructed, of sod walls, with a thatched roof, the whole presenting a comfortable and warm appearance. This Celestial abode is 120 feet long, and divided into four cottage-like compartments with their doorways towards the cook-house. Each compartment is then subdivided again into sleeping places, some with only a narrow passage between the bunks or beds, while in others there is room for a table and a few seats, so that the inmates might enjoy the luxury of gambling or amuse themselves with a little music on their native fiddle, flute, or guitar.^[14]

The dressed sheep and whole roast pigs suggest an especially festive meal. However a recent archaeological study shows that the Chinese miners did indeed eat more meat than their European counterparts.^[15]

Making a community: Aotearoa's first Chinese settlement
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Marvellous inventions

As time went on goldmining technology improved. A system of hydraulic elevation was invented, where the sluiced paydirt was sucked up a vertical pipe and then allowed to flow down very long gold-boxes into the tail race.

This was used by several Chinese groups in the 1890s and 1900s. Choie Sew Hoy and his son Kum Poy Sew Hoy also used hydraulic sluicing at their large Nokomai Valley claim, which operated until 1942.

A stamper battery was developed to extract gold in its quartz form. When Macetown desperately needed this crushing device in 1876, an Italian miner, Lorenzo Resta drew up plans and an Arrowtown carpenter and blacksmith, Kam Chun built it.^[16]

Perhaps the most revolutionary invention was the steam dredge. Led by Dunedin pioneer Choie Sew Hoy, the experimental steam dredge used a bucket chain that reached forward of its bows. The new dredge could work river flats and banks and started a dredging boom that peaked in the 1900s. The principles of the ‘Sew Hoy dredge’ became standard for dredges in New Zealand and overseas.

The end of the golden era

By the 1880s most of the gold had gone. The earliest Chinese arrivals had been the most successful, leaving successful within just a few years. In January 1870 for example, 69 men sailed with 1,415 ounces of gold and 3,000 gold sovereigns.^[17] This was perhaps £150 to £200 each – a small fortune. The others may not have made as much, but with the end of the gold most returned home too.

Returning home
[essay to come]  

However, some stayed. Quite a number of older men remained in New Zealand – by choice or misfortune. Many had become part of their communities, although they were not eligible for the old age pension when it was introduced in 1898 as Chinese were specifically excluded. In their very old age, some ended up in benevolent homes like the one in Dunedin. A number of younger men stayed as well, moving to the cities or on to other work.^[18]

The 1901 Census was the first to show fewer than 50% of Chinese working as gold miners. It also showed that the majority were now living in North Island urban areas. The era of gold had passed, but it was a period in which Chinese had done very well. Historian Dr James Ng has calculated that the Otago Chinese goldminers, in the period 1873 to 1885, ‘comprised about 40% of the Otago goldminers and produced perhaps 30% of the gold. This amounted in 1873-85 to about £1.8 million’.^[19]