Eleven-year-old Charlotte is a Pakeha girl living with her large family in Mornington, Dunedin, in the 1860s. She yearns to escape a life of cramped and mundane domesticity.
When she meets a local schoolboy on his way to join his father on the Central Otago goldfields she seizes the opportunity and hops aboard the rickety coach.
Yet while life in Hogburn Gully among local riff-raff and Chinese gold miners is certainly more exciting, it is also much tougher than Charlotte had expected.
Here is a great introduction for young readers to the Otago gold rush and life in early colonial Dunedin. Included is a glossary and informative end notes.
This story will surely whet the reader's appetite to learn more about this defining time in our city and the wider surrounding region, and how gold mining has shaped our history and land as it is today.
Ages 7-10.
- Jessie Neilson is a University of Otago library assistant and mother.
