Daily Photo – Autumn in Arrowtown and Bush Creek
When Jack Tewa first found gold near the Arrow River in May 1862, it’s fair to say he would have been quite surprised, considering he was searching for lost sheep at the time. The valley of the Arrow River was so inaccessible that, for some time, the first miners had the place all to themselves. That was until their closely guarded secret was discovered by the rest of the world, and a canvas town sprang up almost overnight, yet getting there was no easy task.
During the 1860s gold rush, getting to the town we now know as Arrowtown, or Fox’s as it was known back then, was a gruelling test of endurance. Located in the Wakatipu Basin, it was one of the most inaccessible regions in the country and, before the development roads, miners used a combination of river trekking, mountain scaling, and sheer determination to get there.
The most common route was to travel to Cromwell and follow the banks of the Kawarau River through deep gorges and past vertical rock walls that were little more than narrow ledges high above the ferocious river. For those coming from the Cardrona Valley, the most direct path was also the steepest, over the rugged and often snow-covered Crown Range. Another common approach was via a steep ridge track that climbed out of the Kawarau Gorge and bypassed the dangerous river bluffs; this path was called the ‘Gentle Annie’. It was a punishing and brutal climb that was anything but gentle. Yet another completely different route was taken by those choosing to travel via Lake Wakatipu. They would trek to the town of Kingston at the southern end of the lake, take a boat to Queenstown, and walk the final 20 kilometres across the Frankton Flats to reach the Arrow River in the Wakatipu Basin.
Getting to the Arrow River was a brutal journey and not for the faint-hearted. It would be some time before anything resembling a road was created and, when they were, things didn’t get any easier. Wagons had to be dragged axle-deep through mud by teams of up to eighteen horses.
Life at the Arrow River was anything but idyllic and a far cry from the picturesque scene. In the early 1860s, miners arrived to find it loud, dirty, and physically grueling, a long way from the “Golden Arrowtown” we know today.
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