Stu Edgecumbe and his wife, Ngaire, have just been issued with their permit from the Ministry of Economic Development (Crown Minerals) to mine gold using traditional methods for the next 15 years.
The operation will mainly target visitors, local people, school groups and parties of senior citizens , using the genuine gold-wash gravels from their own property.
They have a mining right for the 2.54ha which extends from Litijens Pond to McLeans Poultry Farm.
It is expected that three full-time equivalent jobs will be created.
The whole area has a solid gold-mining history.
Beginning in 1886, there was sluicing down the gullies at Roxburgh east, Hercules Flat and Commissioners Flat.
The second wave came when the Kawarau dam at Frankton was closed in 1926, which greatly reduced the Clutha River level.
Miners worked the gold-laden riverbank ironsand deposits that the original miners could not reach and the steam dredges could not touch.
The Parker family is believed to have mined 60oz (1701g) of gold in two days.
The town of Teviot was found to be on high-yield, gold-bearing "wash", so the relocatable homes and shops were shifted across the river and renamed Roxburgh.
The old town was sluiced into the river.
The Edgecumbes moved into their house on Ladysmith Rd, Roxburgh East, in 1987 and then discovered their house was on land that had not been touched by the early gold miners as it was too close to the cemetery for the large gold-mining operations, and miners had been prevented from moving in that far from the river.
The couple and their friend Bill James have been practising panning with friends and family over the past couple of years, and they have found some quite large specks of gold.
The land they are using is full of alluvial gold, Mr Edgecumbe reckons, and so far he has not been proved wrong.
