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Mr Robert Gray talks about reefing at the Old Man Range. There was a good reef there, worked by a school friend of his, Robert Symes. His father had worked in the area and made a good amount of gold; the family are still resident in the area.
The reefs formed a peculiar formation called a 'sugary loaf' on the Old Man Range. It took very little to crush it and the gold was all free, but the reefs petered out at no great depth. They were very soft and rich, but not very big.
The interviewer asks about using gunpowder in mining on the Blue Spur.
The first charge was fired by Morrison and party, and was three tonnes of blasting powder. They drove a tunnel straight into the face and a T-tunnel at either end. The charge was put in at the join of the T. None of them were sure of how to fire the charge so they called in an expert.
Mr Gray thinks the shot was a success, although they found that the third tonne of powder never went off.
The interviewer asks about discipline on the gold fields.
Mr Gray says the gold fields were mostly very orderly and there was little crime. The only significant crime he heard of was the murder of a storekeeper at Waipori and stabbing of his daughter. He refers to the daughter as 'Old Mrs Cotton' whose family are still out in Waipori.
He mentions another murder up at Miller's Flat. And there were plenty of brawls, which were used to resolve disputes, but no serious crime.
The interviewer asks how they sent the gold to Dunedin.
Gray says a police escort went all the way to Queenstown and back to Dunedin via all the gold-fields, picking up the gold and bringing it back to Dunedin.
The interviewer notes that the ledger mentions a lot of brandy. Gray says the miners worked hard and drank hard. The miners spent a lot of their money on recreation, which involved a lot of alcohol. There were two hotels on the Blue Spur, and there were a number of them in Gabriel's Gully all the way down to Lawrence. They had accommodation and served food as well as being drinking establishments.
He goes on to talk about Chinese miners. They arrived around 1866. There was a lot of protest from the other miners who did not want to allow them onto the gold fields. At their peak, there were about 4-500 Chinese men.
He says they were mostly quiet, hard-working and law-abiding, and content to work the poorer ground or claims that had already been picked over. As a boy, he took his cue from the adults and he and the other children used to taunt the Chinese miners they came across.
He says the Chinese worked with 'Californian pumps'. The boys used to whip the stopper out of the race so the water flowed off down the hillside and then hide when the miners came swearing up the hill.
For fun, the boys went swimming or shooting 'Māori hens' and other native birds. There were no rabbits in those days.
The rabbits became noticeable in the area around the 1870s. Lots of the boys kept rabbits as pets in the early days. There were some in Waitahuna earlier than the 1860s, being bred for sport in the district.