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The interviewer introduces Mr Robert Gray, one of the oldest residents of the district, whose parents were in Lawrence at the time of Gabriel Reed's discovery of gold at Gabriel's Gully.
Mr Gray's parents were at Glenore, where they had heard gold was to be found. They were prospecting with a runaway sailor when a bullock driver happened past and told them about Gabriel Reed's discovery. They joined the driver and moved up to Tuapeka near Lawrence. The bullock driver directed them towards Gabriel's Gully but took a wrong turn and found Munro's Gully instead, where they met George Munro and his wife. The next day they found Gabriel Reed coming out of his claim and after talking to him, shifted their camp up to Gabriel's Gully. There were three claims operating there at the time. His mother was the first woman on the gold field.
Gray's father did not know much about gold mining and was not getting on very well in the spot they had chosen, so Gabriel Reed directed them to a more profitable claim and gave him a good start at it.
Before long the place became crowded when the Australian miners moved in. Gray's father moved further up the gully and found a successful claim. Gray's mother also worked hard on the gold claim.
The conditions in the camp were very basic early on. The miners camped in tents, surrounded by snow and mud. They had to pack manuka scrub in the bottom of the tents to stop the damp. Provisions were scarce as it was difficult to get bullock carts up the gully. The winter was very hard, but as the weather improved storekeepers moved into the area to supply the miners.
The town of Lawrence grew up as it was the junction between several mining areas, so it became a natural place for the bullock teams to stop for the night.
There would have been two or three thousand miners in the area within a few months of Gabriel Reed discovering gold in the area.
Reed did not stay long in the area so Gray's father would have been among the few to meet him. Gray says Reed was a born prospector, he was in it for the adventure as much as monetary gain.
Gray's father's fortune ebbed and flowed during his time on the goldfields. Sometimes he struck lucky and sometimes he took on ventures that didn't work out. His mother said that sometimes wood became scarce and they had to go further up the gully to get firewood. She said when she climbed up to the top it was an impressive sight to look back down and see the army of miners working in the gully.
As Gray grew up, the gold field grew and was still working, however he never did a day's work mining there. He did all his mining in Central Otago. The Chinese came in later and took over the poor ground that had been left by the original miners.
As the population grew, people began to build better places to live and they shifted up the hill to Blue Spur. They dug water races to transport water from Waipora, about thirty miles away. The settlement boomed about three years after Gabriel's discovery, before people started moving away due to competition from places like Dunstan.
Robert was raised and went to school on the Blue Spur.
It was a slower process to obtain gold there than at Gabriel's Gully, but it was richer. The work carried on there for sixty or seventy years. His father never worked on Blue Spur, however, as his health failed.
He had been suffering from consumption since before he arrived in New Zealand. He mined in many places in the area. His last claim was in Gray's Gully and his health finally gave out and Gray's mother was left to support the family.
His mother supported four young children and her husband. They shifted to Blue Spur where his mother found more work available. The children did not attend school for very long. There were about thirty children in the school, but it soon grew. There was a succession of teachers before the longest-serving, Mr Tyndall, took up his position in about 1880. He stayed teaching at Blue Spur for 25 years. His son became a judge in Wellington.
Robert left school to start work at 12 years old. His first job was clearing scrub from a new mining claim for 5 shillings per week. He then went to work for friends of his mother's in Dunedin, where he earned the same. He worked very long hours, but they kept Sundays. He then went up to Wanaka to work, then came back to Dunedin and worked for a butcher. He grew tired of the city so came back to Central Otago. He worked on a boat on Lake Wanaka, transporting materials to build a hotel. This was around the time of the Mt Cripple rush, which made things very busy around Wanaka. They took prefabricated huts up the mountain on packhorses. While he was up there, he was offered a claim. One of the men offered to be his mate and work the claim together, but his boss talked him out of it. It turned out to be one of the most successful claims in the area.
After that, he went to join his brother in New South Wales and worked in Australia for some years. He left Melbourne on his 19th birthday to come home. That would have been in 1887 - Mr Gray is about to turn 80.
When he returned to Otago, he moved around a lot again. He worked on a sheep station, then as a farm hand during the harvest, then a friend persuaded him to go prospecting near Roxburgh. They spent more than six months there over winter.
A man who was rabbiting not far from their camp got lost in the snow and his body was not found until the spring. On one occasion he and his friend got lost in the snow and only the instinct of one of their horses led them home.