Gold prospecting in Central Otago continues to captivate residents who share a passion for the district's history and the dream of one day striking it rich.
There is district-wide belief in lucrative opportunities for finding gold, but only for people who can afford the increasing cost of bureaucratic restrictions surrounding excavation and the disturbance of archaeological sites.
Those with more modest budgets take to Central Otago's rivers and creeks armed with pans, wetsuits, and snorkels, in the hope of finding the odd nugget which might fetch up to $1000.
Alexandra resident Bob Kilgour owns and directs Dunstan Mining Ltd, which is one of the few small mining companies in Otago to persevere with the necessary court proceedings for gaining prospecting permits.
‘‘There are enormous opportunities out there for small mining companies to get started and actually make a profit,'' he said.
Mr Kilgour, in his 60s, has spent more than $60,000 to keep a prospecting permit for Red Rim Reef in the Nevis Valley.
He first made an arrangement with the then land owner more than a decade ago.
Mr Kilgour said the Department of Conservation (Doc), Land Information New Zealand (Linz) and the Central Otago District Council (CODC) had made it difficult to prospect, let alone mine, any of the district's gold sites.
‘‘Through land tenure review, Doc has snapped up so much land as reserve, and the CODC has designated most of it as significant landscape value.
‘‘They want to keep it for tourism, but any tourist venture will never be able to return the economic growth and wealth which gold mining can,'' he said.
Mr Kilgour said there was ‘‘hundreds of millions'' of dollars worth of gold in Otago, with international prices at a record high and set to increase.
He said that for the last 25 years, mining had supported his family, which had ties to gold mining over more than three generations.
‘‘There are a lot of other families in Central Otago because of gold and still have gold coursing through their veins. It's a historical, cultural, and spiritual thing, not just a moneymaker,'' he said.
Mr Kilgour expected to complete his limited access agreement with Doc for ‘‘very minor'' prospecting in the Nevis soon and hoped to spend three weeks there before winter set in.
‘‘If we do that, and find there is a reason to continue, we will have to go back to Doc and further the consent to extend exploration. If it's worthwhile, I will have to get another permit to go mining,'' he said.
Red Rim Reef, in which Mr Kilgour's father owned shares, was a well-known mining site during the gold rush era.
Mr Kilgour believed the art of gold mining had been largely lost in Central Otago, but a few people scattered around the district kept the tradition alive.
‘‘It's the paperwork and bureaucratic involvement in getting mining permits which puts people off. But there is also a lot of privately owned land in the Maniototo, Cromwell, Ida Valley, and other parts of Central Otago which would be reasonably easy to mine,'' he said.
Leaning Rock Vineyard owner and Alexandra resident Mark Hesson also had family history in gold mining. His great-grandparents settled at Fruitlands and his grandfather mined in Alexandra.
He said he was a recreational gold fossicker who liked roaming the hills and creeks around Alexandra.
‘‘You spend hours finding nothing and then strike a pocket of it and get some. I have found a few nuggets over the years, but nothing major,'' he said.
Mr Hesson (49), a geologist, said he did not use suction devices in rivers but rather a simple pan or just a wetsuit and snorkel to find his gold.
‘‘I certainly haven't spent hundreds of thousands of dollars . . . but there's plenty of places around Alexandra to find gold. I like going to places where there is potential to find big nuggets. There is always the chance and that's what gets me excited,'' he said.
Mr Hesson had been involved in mineral excavation for about 30 years and said that in the past 10 years he had focused on old sites where miners had missed areas of gold in their initial excavations.
‘‘I can go to a creek that was well worked in the 1860s and in a 5km section find three spots that obviously were not mined thoroughly, if at all. Each of those spots, about a square metre, would have taken me four hours to get the gold out,'' he said.
Lex McLean, another Alexandra resident with generations of gold miners in his family, was fighting to keep his history - and the district's - alive and in the hands of those who cared about the prosperous gold industry.
His great-grandfather settled in the Nevis to prospect in 1863, and the family continued prospecting until the early 1970s.
Mr Mclean (68), was no longer in a position to mine for gold, but was dedicated to collecting and preserving the equipment and cultural articles used by miners throughout the district.
‘‘There was a strong sense of striking it rich in my family. It was our way of life, and what my parents knew,'' he said.
He had spent considerable time and effort collecting mining equipment once owned by his family, in order to protect it from looters eager to supply a growing demand.
‘‘A single bucket from a dredge could fetch up to $1000 in Queenstown, and some pieces are worth $5000. People want them in their gardens or on properties as sculptures,'' Mr McLean said.
As a child he could find countless pieces of gold-related material in the Nevis Valley, which was now picked clean.
In June last year, Alexandra gold-mining heritage researchers Cam Withington, Graeme Stewart, and Mr McLean went searching for a forgotten gold-mining village called the North Pole, about 1400m above sea level in the Carrick Range.
Together with a television film crew, the trio got into trouble with the New Zealand Historic Places Trust for disturbing a gold site without trust approval.
They removed a bottle from the extensive gold workings and several sites of low-walled huts, which they later believed was not the North Pole village, but somewhere close to it.
Mr McLean said the group's common goal was to preserve and celebrate the area's history, rather than destroy it.
As a result of restrictions in place against prospecting or even researching old mine sites, he said no-one but those rich enough to finance court proceedings were able to initiate the process.
‘‘There's money in gold - of course there is - but it takes a lot of money to get it these days,'' he said.
