Gold found at Gabriel’s Gully
- When
- 1861–1864
- Where
- Gabriel’s Gully, Tuapeka · Tuapeka
- Reach
- Several regions
Gabriel Read’s find more than quadrupled Otago’s population in three years and made Dunedin the largest and wealthiest city in the country.
Miners arrived from the Victorian goldfields, then from Britain, and from 1866 in organised numbers from Guangdong. Otago’s population went from about 13,000 to over 60,000. The wealth built Dunedin’s stone city centre, funded the country’s first university in 1869, and shifted economic and political weight decisively to the South Island for a generation. Chinese miners, invited to rework abandoned claims, were then subjected to a poll tax from 1881 — apologised for by the Crown in 2002.
Regions affected
Sources
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