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One Man’s Goldfield: the story of the Horseshoe Bend Diggings, William Rigney and Somebody’s Darling

which the Garrett Gang held up diggers returning to Dunedin with their winnings. The
gang would spend the night at a local hotel listening to the miners bragging of their
winnings, leave early in the morning and relieve the successful miners of their gold as
they passed.

The miners were not always the victims. Farmers along the way suffered from the
newcomers. Wood of any sort being in very short supply, many a fencepost and rail
was used to boil a billy. Not even buildings were safe. The Woolshed Creek was
named for a shed on Cameron’s Station. One miner, arriving at Gabriel's to find no
timber available to build a cradle or a sluice box remembered the shed and returned to
it for timber. Within a week no trace of the woolshed remained.

Farmers also lost stock to miners who took little effort to establish the wildness of any
sheep encountered when ostensibly pig shooting in the back country.

The general condition of lawlessness extended to the behaviour of the miners to each
other. Miners protected their claims or lost them to stronger parties. At night after
retiring to their tents, the miners would fire off their pistols to show that they were
armed, and presumably to ensure fresh powder in the event of unwelcome visitors
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before weighing and dividing their takings.

The Tuapeka Recorder of 11 August 1865 included:

"A rather amusing incident occurred at Horseshoe Bend. The Sergeant favoured the
residents of that locality with a visit and although it is a notorious fact that the place
swarms with dogs yet on this occasion they were very scarce. Found one no one
claimed; tried twice to shoot it with his revolver and failed then paid a miner 5 shillings
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to drown the dog!"

Settlers at the Bend

Horseshoe Bend was more a district than a specific location, no town of Horseshoe
Bend was ever surveyed, or sections sold off. The majority of residents lived on the
terrace area below the hill where the graves are located, and around the lane which is
now the driveway of the farmhouse.

The few lists of early Horseshoe Bend residents which exist are in electoral rolls and
Wises Directories. The electoral rolls are limited to males with permanent residences
and Wises Directories to those in particular categories of trade. The following names
appear on these lists of early residents:

Table 1 Horseshoe Bend Residents - Wises Directories
Thomas James Geddes George Marshall Edmund Perry
Aitken

Adam Barr John Gilbert Robert Patrick
Matthewson Rehenan

11 "Gabriel’s Gully Jubilee: Reminiscences of the Early Gold Mining Days" Printed for the Jubilee Committee by the Otago Daily Times and Witness
Newspaper Company. 1911
12 Tuapeka Recorder 11.8.1865

© Jeff Robertson 10