Open Writing

Dallas Goodwillie, what a name to give a child. It could only belong to some one who accidentally fell through plate glass windows or spilt red gloss paint onto polished floors.

Yes, Dallas was a character, one of my thirty-odd, 2.OL second form English and Social Studies class, but then 2.OL had many characters of Dallas Goodwillie's ilk, socks round their ankles, shirts hanging out, hot and sweaty, with sticky hands eager to investigate, find out and generally disrupt. They were named 2.OL after their form teacher, Keith Olsen, and the suffix was a very apt one.

I discovered early in the year that 'read Chapter 4 and answer Questions 1-6,' did not work for 2.OL. It usually resulted in chaos as they were driven to desperate measures by boredom. They were 'hands on' 12 year olds, capture their imagination and they would do anything.

When Canada appeared on our syllabus we built Canada, every bit of it. No pot of paint or piece of wood was safe. The art man took to hiding things and the woodwork man wondered where his supplies were.

They were at the end of B Block, the home of the little dears, who came back at weekends to work, as Canada took over the whole room, research well done, from the scaling of the Plains of Abraham to the Rocky Mountains, all with working models.

Then Gold appeared. This was in the days when the inspectorate in ivory towers, who had never been at the 'chalk face,' decreed that we should do 'integrated studies,' ie. equate Keats with quadrilateral equations and other such things. However Keith, the science man and I thought gold might fit into this category and decided to give it a go.

We wrote and read stories and poems about gold. We delved into the history and geography of gold and, with much role playing, worked our way to the carrot at the end of the stick, a trip to the Gold Fields. The art man locked up his gold paint, the woodwork man hid his wood and brass fittings, as 2.OL went on the prowl to make sluice boxes and dredges and cradles. Mothers lost their best frying pans and picks and shovels vanished from garden sheds. We were on the move to the second gold rush.

Why gold? The prosperity of Otago was based largely on th Gold Rush of the 1800's. A reward of five hundred pounds was posted for the first man to discover gold and the miners from Australia and elsewhere, closely followed by a strong Chinese contingency, descended on the province. In 1861, Gabriel Read found the first gold, which he described as "shining like the stars in Orion on a dark, frosty night." Thousands followed, creating tent cities and naming streams, such as Roaring Meg and Gentle Annie, after the local barmaids. From this activity came Otago's wealth and Dunedin's development into a fine city.

Meanwhile miners worked their way up the Clutha river and it's many tributaries, climbing through the valleys above Lawrence, to the high plateaux and desert areas, covered in the native tussock which spreads, like a golden fleece, across the hills. For the High country is a golden country and it's creeks hide nuggets of gold, washed down over the millenia.

They struggled up to the source of the river in the snow clad mountains, living rough in home made shelters and going where 'no man had gone before,' opening up the areas which have now become the home of orchards, vineyards and vast sheep and cattle stations. They sluiced the hillsides, creating new lakes. They built water races, still in use today, but not for mining. They cradled, dredged and panned and marched ever onwards with their picks and shovels.
Gabriel Read's discovery site, Gabriel's Gully, is to be found in Lawrence, a quaint old mining town of tastefully restored wooden buildings, complete with verandas and hitching rails, which now serves the farming community and has a thriving tourist industry based on the first gold strike. Lawrence is still benefiting from that first gold rush but knows nothing of it's second.

Work completed, we hired a bus and set off, with our group of keen miners, to explore Lawrence and the gold fields. We wandered up to the races, which they investigated. We looked at the large ponds and scars on the hillsides, caused by sluicing and at the large cliffs of rock which refused to yield to the sluice guns.

And we lost Dallas Goodwillie, who finally appeared on the top of one of these cliffs.

"We had better get him down, Keith," I said. "Why," said Keith, " let him fall off, it will be one less to worry about."

But Dallas, like a cat, had nine lives so returned, unscathed, to fight another day.

I must say they were pretty good, wandering around the old Chinese dwellings and looking at all that was to be seen, but the carrot was still dangling.

We reached the stream where Gabriel Read had discovered his gold. Set amongst it's golden tussock clad hills with the trees wearing their autumn tints, it was indeed a golden place. They settled down with their packed lunches and bottles of ' fizz,' clutching their various bits of gold mining equipment, a motley, lovable bunch of rogues, and while they tucked in, Keith took a stroll up the river bed.

Rubbish was cleared away and the second Klondike began. "Gee Miss, I've found some." "Come and look at this, Mrs T."

Sure enough, specks of the gold in Orion sparkled in the water. No miners could have worked harder, cradles rocked, dredges dredged, gold pans panned, no inch of the stream was left alone. "Found some!" "Look at this." Slowly their little glass phials filled and their excitement grew.

Finally, with much trouble, we dragged them away and loaded the wet, grubby, happy, little creatures and their new found fortunes onto the bus. As Keith and I, clad in dirty jeans and sweaters, settled ourselves on the front seat, where we could watch the back row through the driver's mirror, he said to me,"Amazing what a few handfulls of brass filings can do."

We grinned at each other and headed for home, away from that golden place glowing in it's autumn glory.

The second Klondike never made the headlines but it certainly made the day.