Cardrona cannot boast of a dastardly figure such as Bully Hayes in its past but, like all mining districts, attracted its share of vagabonds and “ne’er do wells”. Charles Colclough was the patron of the Royal Mail Hotel and Post Office Store. He was also a joint leaseholder with James Gibson and together they ran 1000 sheep locally in 1868. Charles had ambitions to obtain a larger pastoral holding so made an application of a depasturing licence for 9200 acres. This alarmed the residents who called a public meeting at Keppal’s Hotel resulting in a successful request to the Superintendent of the Province to refuse Colclough’s application.
In 1868 Colclough alleged that a Swede by the name of Corfitz Cronquest had given him a valueless cheque for £10. Colclough admitted he had been selling grog by the glass without a licence, but said he had been given permission to do so. Another ran a billiard table on his premise, nevertheless, his most frank admission was that games of chance did take place on his premises but he assured the court it was not a gaming house. Cronquest, who had managed to convince the hotelier that he had £90 in his bank account at Clyde before issuing the cheque, based his defence on having been provided with drink and tricked into playing poker. He alleged that having lost £19 a few days prior, he then watched how Colclough played and noted he was cheating. He gave the cheque in the hope he might win back his losses. George Bond acted as a prosecution witness and rebutted the accused story of being plied with alcohol and the jury only took thirty minutes to return a guilty verdict. Cronquest got six months hard labour for his trouble, the outcome was probably correct; the man although very intelligent with publications to his credit, committed audacious acts of larceny and forgery for the next twenty years appearing before courts in NZ, Fiji and Australia. Today we would consider him an incorrigible “con artist”.
Colclough must also have been a gold buyer. On the 11th April 1870 a Chinese miner named Muk Kum was prosecuted for having sold a composition of lead and gold to Colclough having represented it as genuine gold, weighing 4oz 7dwt 12grs, and for which the miner received £16 8s. A similar swindle had been performed by a Chinese miner on another hotelkeeper, Mr Robert Patterson, the previous year using lead shot. When the composition of Colclough’s purchase was analysed it was found it consisted of four ounces, six pennyweights and twenty grams lead, and one pennyweight, two grams gold – the lead being valued at four pence and the gold at four shillings. This trial caused a legal precedent. At the time there was no provision for the punishment of persons who sold spurious gold so the offence was treated as “false pretences.” As the defendant had admitted to an interpreter that he done some previous “gold making” he was sentenced to 2 years hard labour. Colclough had his own runin with the law after rival publican, Pat Keppal, complained to the Arrow Police in December 1867. He claimed an illegal auction for the right to run a booth at the Cardrona races had been held by Colcough raising the sum of £21. The Arrow Police had difficulty coercing a reluctant witness, James Gill, into cooperating, placing him in custody for two hours until he provided the required evidence. Colclough later sold up and moved to Cromwell operating businesses there for a number of years before finally ending up in Paeroa where he was to pass away aged 75 in 1909. He campaigned from his home in Cromwell to have Cardrona move its allegiance to Vincent County.
A couple of years later some Cardrona Chinese miners again appeared in court this time involving gaming offences. In some parts of Otago gambling by the Chinese was ignored however, in this instance, bribes were offered to the police to turn a blind eye. This ultimately lead to charges being laid by Sergeant Cassels. Ye Neim, a storekeeper, and Jim Louk were convicted and fined £5 each. On the 11th July 1870 Cassels had visited Ye Neim’s store and found several Chinamen gambling. He cautioned all those present. Later that day the defendants went to the Sergeant and requested he allow them to gamble. Ye Neim offered Cassels gifts and Jim Louk stated he would pay him £1 per week if the Sergeant turn a blind eye to his gambling. The game in question is known by the name Fan-tan.
On Sunday 18th July when the store was again visited by Sergeant Cassels, approximately seventy Chinese were engaged in gambling, in spite of the caution they had received. The Sergeant seized the tables and the appliances for carrying on the game, plus all the money he could lay his hands on. On the evening of the very same day Ye Neim’s store was raided for a second time. This time around one hundred Chinese were discovered gambling and again their assets were seized. It would appear the main reason they attracted the attention of the police was that the day in question was the Sabbath.
John Mace aka “Kaka Jack” an early Upper Clutha resident, he applied for a residents site in Cardrona February 1865 (not to be confused with the Maces of Macetown). He ran a cartage business prior to going mining. He was a careful man with his money. He suffered a severe loss in 1872 when his wagon and team were involved in an incident with unruly cattle belonging to Tim and Pat Cotter on the Cardrona road. One horse was badly injured and his wagon damaged making it impossible to carry on his business. He took a case to the Wardens Court at Dunstan claiming £140. After deductions Kaka Jack received a judgement of £89. This is an interesting case as a private letter exists in the Wardens file from a solicitor in Arrowtown warning that the Cotters were devising a plan to avoid having to make restitution.
Kaka Jack suffered a terrible personal tragedy when his daughter Wilhelmina, aged just seven years, attended to the fire in the house on her own. The little girl’s nightdress went up in flames. Next door, Mr Austin smelled the burning and rushed to the child’s rescue, but it was too late. Poor Wilhelmina suffered such extensive burns she died the following day. Her father continued to mine in Cardrona until the late 1880s but the industry’s decline left him in difficult straits. At one stage he worked as a paid prospector on the subsidy scheme for 5shillings per day. He had married an Irish girl Mary Dyer in 1875 and they still had a young family upon moving to Napier in 1891. Shortly after establishing himself in the Hawkes Bay Kaka Jack died suddenly whilst cutting grass. Mary gathered up the children and moved back south to Dunedin.
The lead of payable wash dirt was found to be in very wet ground requiring the use of extensive pumping. These pumps were driven by overshot waterwheels, the equipment supplied by Dunedin engineering works of Messrs Kincaid, McQueen, and Co of the Vulcan Foundry. The nature of the area was such that if one claim stopped pumping then the volume of water would affect the others.
By early 1868 the Ginn and Rasberry, now named the Sir George Grey (christened by His Excellency the late Governor, when on his tour through the Otago Goldfields), the Homeward Bound, Pirate (one week in October 1867, the Pirate yielded eighty-two ounces of gold), Rise and Shine, and Italians were in full swing within this area. These mines were estimated to be paying dividends to individual shareholders of between £12 and £20 per week. These claims were typically an acre worked by five or six shareholders down sometimes to a depth of fifty feet, the ground being taken out by drives or tunnels. Typically these larger mines were situated in a terrace beside the Cardrona River. They were worked by sinking a paddock to a depth of twenty-five feet over an area thirty square yards then cutting a drainage tunnel to the river. A race was cut to the paddock edge to provide a supply to power a water wheel, which drove the pumps used to keep the drives and paddock floor dry. The drives, or adits, could then be cut into the walls of the paddock enabling a more efficient removal of the wash material. This method was only possible when sufficient miners formed themselves into a party with capital otherwise the small mines were restricted to cutting a shaft and using a windlass to get to the richer material or cutting small free draining paddocks.
The pay dirt varies from two to five feet in thickness; the ground through which the drives were cut contained a lot of large stones and boulders. These were used as supports for the tunnels requiring less timber props than was usual. As well as the larger operations others operating at this time were Austin’s Party, Fox’s Party, Oliver’s, Yankee Dan, Murray’s, The Rip & Tear Party, Munford & Party, and Pearce sustaining a population at Cardrona that was estimated now to be around 300. In the period from 1865 the district had done well was thought to have a very viable future as a mining centre. Plenty of water on site, reasonably inexpensive timber, serviced by a good road from Pembroke, there was talk that Cardrona should get its own Warden’s Court rather than using the one at Arrowtown.
By now there were four hotels operating in Cardrona. Business and commerce were flourishing and a number of men involved in the mining industry also had local commercial interests.
Timothy Cotter and John Kerin ran a butchery as did Thomas Tuohy. After Cotter and Kerin dissolved their partnership in 1868, Kerin worked with Tuohy for a period. Timothy Cotter also ran a store and his brother (or cousin depending on sources) Pat Cotter was one of the miners who first took up farming in the valley.
The Cardrona publicans were reported in December 1869 as the last on the goldfields to reduce the price of a “nobler”, one shot of alcohol, from one shilling to the universal sixpence. This reduction apparently caused great rejoicing in the valley.
The Golden Age Hotel
J. McGrath, the proprietor of The Golden Age Hotel, had been in a large machinery based mining venture with Felix and Thomas Fox (not to be confused with the Fox’s of Arrow). Brother John Fox mined at Brackens Gully before his involvement in the Cardrona. The Fox Brothers had a history of mining in the Cardrona before the Big Flood of 1878 washed them out. The third Fox brother, John, moved to Hawea Flat about 1880 and other two brothers, Felix and Thomas, moved a few years later. The trio were involved with a claim on the Mt Criffel field, reputed to be the most lucrative. Once year they sold £1700 of gold at Cromwell and consequently their farming operation was well financed. In November 1875 McGrath’s twenty-seven year old wife passed away. Her funeral, held on a wild, wet and windy day, was the largest that had been held in Cardrona.
The Empire
G.B Bond, George, invested heavily in Cardrona through mining and the establishment of The Empire Hotel. George came to a rather unfortunate end in early 1876 when he drowned in the Clutha River at Cromwell. An article reporting his death appeared in the Cromwell Argus casting insidious innuendo upon the man, as was often the case with journalism of the time. Rebecca Bond, his widow, came to his defence in the 21st February edition stating she was dismayed by the reporting and explained that whilst staying at Goodyer’s Commercial Hotel George had fallen from the window, somehow making his way into the river. She stated it was purely an accident. The medication he was taking being a mitigating factor along with the construction of the hotel causing disorientation. Stories remain, however, of Georges entrenched objectionable reputation. His widow Rebecca soldiered on with The Empire until 1879 before moving to the Ballarat Hotel in Arrowtown. Supporting her young family herself, she never remarried and operated successful hotels in Queenstown, Palmerston South and Invercargill until her death in 1904 at Palmerston North whilst visiting her son Fred. The Empire Hotel was bought by John Willoughby in 1885. Willoughby renamed the premise the Cardrona Hotel and the original façade of this iconic establishment still stands proudly today – a photographic legend for South Island travellers.
The Cardrona Hotel
From 1885 the Empire Hotel was known as the Cardrona Hotel and still is today. One of New Zealand’s oldest hotels, The Cardrona Hotel is a famous landmark on the scenic Crown Range drive between Wanaka and Queenstown.
Some of the previous owners are as follows:
1927 – 1961 – Jim Patterson
1961 – 1970 – Jack Galvin
1970 – 1977 – John Lee
1977 – 1988 – Eddie & Rosemary Jones
1988 – 1993 – S & J MacKnight
1993 – 1999 – B Gilbert
1999 – 2002 – Grant Lawrie, J O’Reilly & Mark Westcott
2002 – 2013 – Mark Westcott
2013 – Present owners – James Jenneson & Cade Thornton
Cardrona Creek Hotel and Store
Robert Patterson and Patrick Keppal operated the Cardrona Creek Hotel and Store until 1871 when Keppal left the firm. Patterson died the following year and the business went up for sale.
All the publicans of Cardrona involved themselves in mining partnerships providing the commercial input needed to get the venture started.
First published in “Cardrona – 150 Years in the Valley of Gold” by Ray O’Callaghan.