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

gorge a little below Cromwell, and below the junction of the Kawarau, my heart was
literally in my mouth, but those two old men seemed to care nothing for the current.
Eventually we reached where the town of Clyde now stands, and then our troubles
were over. At last we reached a place on the river bank which I think was called Te
1
Houka, and we landed there."

The trip down river took four or five days with the party presumably camping at the
mouth of streams along the way. No record remains of where the party camped and it
is obvious from the absence of detail in Chalmers account of his return to civilisation
that he took little interest in the country through which he was passing, being happy to
be returning to the coast with minimal effort and all possible speed. The rapid trip
down the Clutha makes Chalmers the first European to have seen the Bend, whether
he noticed its passing or not!

In 1857 the area received its second European visit. Walter Miller and John Cargill
climbed the Lammerlaw Range also in search of new country for sheep runs and
looked over the area.

Miller and Cargill left a lasting impression on the area, not least in the many local
place names which are attributed to them, including that of Millers Flat and Horseshoe
2
Bend.

It is uncertain which feature Horseshoe Bend was originally named for, there being
several tight bends in the Clutha River, downstream of Millers Flat. It is likely that the
feature named Horseshoe Bend was that which encircles the hill on which the Lonely
Graves stand, this being the bend most visible from the east side of the river.

At around the same time that Miller and Cargill were looking for sheep country, others
were also exploring the valley of the Clutha. Alexander and Watson Shennan set out
for the little known interior of Otago shortly after arriving at Dunedin from Scotland. As
with the earlier parties the prime motive for their trip was also to search for land for
sheep runs. Walter Shennan wrote an account of their travels in the Tapanui Courier.
This has been reprinted by Herries Beattie and is reprinted again here. This is the
earliest written record of travel through the Horseshoe Bend area by land.

"Early in Dec. I left Meadowbank for the interior, going north, and making for the valley
of the Molyneux [Clutha] River, I found the country between the Tokomiriro Plain and
the Waitahuna River occupied by Messrs James Smith and John Cargill, but beyond
that it was no man's land. After crossing the Waitahuna River, I found some very
good sheep country; but much of it was very scrubby. Going on over the ridges there
was some nice open country between the branches of the Tuapeka River, and I
pitched camp one night in the gully afterwards called Gabriel’s Gully, little thinking of
the wealth that was buried only a few feet under the ground. Had I suspected the
presence of gold, I might have given up searching for sheep country. Later I found the
country too rough to get any nearer the Molyneux River, so kept pretty well up the
ridges on the open country until the Beaumont Stream was reached. After crossing
that stream the country was still scrubby and difficult to travel over, and there was

1 Beattie, H "The Pioneers Explore Otago" Otago Daily Times and Witness Newspaper Company. 1947
2 Beattie, H "Otago Place Names" Otago Daily Times and Witness Newspaper Company. 1948

© Jeff Robertson 6