Tourist finds nugget thought to be worth $500

The 4.5g  nugget found yesterday. Photo supplied.
The 4.5g nugget found yesterday. Photo supplied.
Gold has been struck near Cromwell - right in the middle of the 150th anniversary celebrations of Hartley and Reilly's initial discovery.

An excited tourist and his family yesterday left the Goldfields Mining Centre, about 10km upstream from Hartley and Reilly's claim, with a 4.5g nugget of gold estimated to be worth about $500.

Goldfields tour guide Brian Henderson said the middle-aged man, thought to have been from Christchurch, had visited the centre, where tourists can pan for gold, with his wife and two children after a skiing holiday in Queenstown.

"It's funny ... his grandfather worked the [gold] dredges here at the turn of the century."

Mr Henderson, who has worked at the centre for 15 years, said staff had seen the odd nugget turn up, but the finds were usually just fine flakes of gold.

The tour guides brought material from the bank of the Kawarau River to the centre, where the tourists panned for gold and usually did not sift through it.

Another guide had once found a couple of small nuggets when demonstrating how to pan.

- sarah.marquet@odt.co.nz

 

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