Photoprint for Sale: Railway Hotel, Old Gold Mining Town, Ravenswood, Queensland

This is an original photoprint from my personal collection

Size of image is 30cm x 46cm (12" x 18").

Price is $NZ 50.00 inc. urban p. and p. in NZ.

Please contact me at donovan@ihug.co.nz or 09 4159 701.

© DON DONOVAN. donovan@ihug.co.nz 
www. don-donovan.blogspot.co.nz

Photoprint for Sale: Goldminers' Hut, Ross, Westland, New Zealand

This is an original photoprint from my personal collection

Size of image is 30cm x 46cm (12" x 18").

Price is $NZ 50.00 inc. urban p. and p. in NZ.

Please contact me at donovan@ihug.co.nz or 09 4159 701.

© DON DONOVAN. donovan@ihug.co.nz 
www. don-donovan.blogspot.co.nz
.

New Zealand Odyssey: Two Buildings in Old Cromwell - Before the Flooding

'New Zealand Odyssey', published in 1989 by Heinemann, was authored by me, Don Donovan (who did the text and illustrations) and Euan Sarginson, who did the photography and design. In this series of blog posts, I will publish some of my drawings.

In the late 1980s, when I painted these two buildings, they stood on the old main street of Cromwell and had done so since the beginnings of the town back in the gold mining days of the late nineteenth century. The street then sloped downwards to where the Clutha and Kawarau rivers met at 'the junction' before flowing swiftly though the Cromwell Gorge below.

The buildings still stand although since the Clutha Dam was filled and Lake Dunstan formed - after 1993 - their inclined highway became a traffic-less back street that disappears under water - a fate the buildings just escaped. 

The upper illustration is of the Masonic Lodge; the lower, a simple schist structure, is Hanson's Cottage, variously owned by a brewer, watchmaker and 'toothpuller'.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
.

New Zealand's Westland: Hokitika Beach

Tracking west from Hokitika Beach you'll not see land until you reach South America. The sea rolls in, unimpeded for thousands of kilometres, leaving the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand one of the harshest in the world with few safe harbours most of which have tide-thrown bars at their entrances.

And yet in the mid-nineteenth century when this narrow strip of land between the Southern Alps and the Tasman Sea was explored and raped minutely by gold miners from all over the world, its harbours - especially Hokitika's - were crammed with ships, tall ships, sailing ships whose skippers, picking their moments, took on the bars in the hope of coming to safe haven. Many didn't make it, consigning their passengers, crews and cargoes to the sea. 

Nobody really knows how many wrecks lie off these shores although timbers still wash ashore to join the litter of tree branches and stumps that are shot out to sea from Westland's rivers only to be cast up again by the westerly tides.

This is Hokitika Beach on a fine evening...


© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz 

Mitchells Cottage, Fruitlands, Central Otago

Completed in 1904, Mitchells’ Cottage at Fruitlands, above the winding highway from Alexandra to Roxburgh, is an outstanding example of the drystone mason’s craft. It was built with painstaking skill, each stone carefully considered and cut so precisely that no mortar was used or needed. It was made by men who knew of no other way to work – no short cuts, no shoddiness – simply the best.

From the Shetland Islands by way of the Australian goldfields Andrew Mitchell arrived in New Zealand in 1866, followed by his brother John in 1872. They worked around the Otago goldfields until, in the 1880s, Andrew discovered a quartz reef on the hills of the Old Man Range above the Clutha Valley. Unlike most gold mining ventures it prospered over a long period and John and Andrew, using skills they’d learned from their father, started to build the cottage below the mine.

John and his wife Jessie brought up ten children in Mitchells’ Cottage (while Andrew lived nearby, alternating between a small stone cottage close to the mine shaft and a smaller iron hut next to John and Jessies’) and although the mine was sold in 1890 and John died in 1922, the cottage stayed in Jessie’s ownership until 1929. It is now in the care of the Department of Conservation.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

Open 7 Days 29. Faigan’s Store, Millers Flat

I wrote and illustrated ‘Open 7 Days’. It was published in 1991. It’s a series of freeze-frames of some historic New Zealand general and convenience stores as they were preserved in the last decade of the 20th century. Bit by bit, on this blog, I re-publish some of the entries from that book.

FAIGAN’S STORE

Teviot Road, Millers Flat, Otago.
Manager: Judith Omond

Louis Faigan opened his first store in Millers Flat in 1896 in a one-roomed shop leased from a watchmaker. Three years later he bought the boarding house on today’s site, turned the front into a store and the back into living quarters, and that’s the way it stayed until fire destroyed it in 1936 and the ‘moderne’ store was erected.

In gold-mining days Faigan’s supplied goods by pack horse to remote diggers, and by horse and cart to the dredge workers on the Clutha as well as to local farmers and residents. Sensitive always to customers’ needs, Faigan even imported ginger and rice for the Chinese miners, and this service philosophy was exemplified in his slogan, ‘Everything from a needle to an anchor’.

The old man died in 1910, and Leopold Faigan, who had started work in his father’s shop in 1899, carried on the business until shortly before his death in 1976. The store stayed in the Faigan family until 1980.

Malcolm and Lesley James closed the store in 1989, but within forty-eight hours, $30,000 was raised from about a hundred households to buy the stock and plant. The enterprise has been owned by community shareholders ever since, with Judith Omond as manager.

The ‘Lonely Graves’ are a famous feature of the area and a poignant reminder of the courage and
compassion of the pioneers.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
.

N.Z. House & Cottage 12. Dudley’s Cottage, Arrowtown

I wrote and illustrated ‘New Zealand House and Cottage’. It was published in 1997. It’s a snapshot of some historic New Zealand homes - both grand and modest - as they were preserved at the end of the 20th century.

I have decided to share some of the entries from the book from time to time on this blog.

DUDLEY’S COTTAGE, ARROWTOWN

Noelene Dudley-Garbutt lives in the little white cottage that stands near the remains of Arrowtown’s Chinese settlement; it has been in her family since the early 1900s. These are her words:

‘The cottage was built in 1862 by the Sillifant Bros (Frenchmen) for the Butler brothers (Irish). My grandfather, George Dudley, purchased the cottage from the Butlers … There have always been Dudleys in residence since then.

‘It’s built of river stones, 2 ft thick [600mm] and bonded together with river sand and lime. The whitewash that kept the sand and lime in place was made from shell lime, mutton fat and cream! This mixture was put into a forty gallon drum and left for twelve hours or so until a beautiful, thick creamy solution had finished “working” and was ready to be painted on with brooms.

‘I remember my grandparents and father, plus aunts and uncles, all being involved in re-painting during my childhood.

‘My grandfather came from Ireland in the late 1800s and married Catherine Austin who was born “just over the hill in Cardrona” … they had eight children, and two daughters are still living.

‘Grandma and grandad were the buffer between the Chinese and miners in Arrowtown. Neither group mixed with the other and if the Chinese needed either the doctor or the police or even groceries from the township grandma would always see that they got help. The Chinese were always very appreciative of anything done for them and were very good to my grandparents . . .’

I’ve drawn and painted lots of cottages in Arrowtown, some of them long before it became the tourist trap it is today. The best known are in Buckingham Street which so far survives creeping commercialism as a pretty, tree-lined road. Somehow, though, despite the hoards of visitors that pass its doors and trespass in its little garden, Dudley’s Cottage gives me a more genuine feel for the old goldmining town than most. Perhaps it’s because the river is close by and if you listen carefully you can hear, through the golden dapple of autumn sunlight, the shuffle of gravel in riffle boxes and the sounds of miners cursing and laughing…

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
.

Vulcan Hotel, St.Bathans

I wrote and illustrated ‘The Good Old Kiwi Pub’. It was published in 1995 and was a snapshot of some New Zealand pubs as they were at the end of the 20th century. I have decided to share some of the entries from the book from time to time on this blog.

St Bathans was born of a gold boom in 1863. A year later it had ten hotels, forty businesses and a population of up to 2000 in the surrounding hills and gullies. Across the road from the pub you can look down into ‘The Glory Hole’, a blue lake that was once a hill 120 metres high! Gold fever hit St Bathans in a big way and, blinded by the urge to win metal above everything else, the early citizens tolerated a mushroom shanty-town of ‘corrugated iron, red iron, tin, gin cases, staves and canvas’. But there seems to have been born into gold miners a need for dignity and a prayer for permanence and so, as the town survived into and beyond the 1870s, more substantial buildings appeared, some of them with sufficient stamina to have lasted into modern times.

St Bathans today is like a time capsule from which it’s possible, in just a couple of hours, to get an appreciation of the composition of a goldfields town: a public hall that was the miners’ billiards saloon, the Bank of New South Wales Gold Office of the late 1860s, the stately old Post Office and postmaster’s residence, the ruins of the 1866 public school, damaged irreparably by earthquake in 1948, the church of St Alban the Martyr given to the town by Captain Dalgety and shipped out, pre-fabricated from England in 1883, and the stone cottage, one of the earliest permanent buildings in the town, first occupied by Sam Hanger who owned the first Vulcan Hotel.

Bank of New South Wales Gold Office
 

There’s been a Vulcan in St Bathans since 1869. Sam Hanger’s first one was a little farther north than is today’s, an impermanent affair thrown up to cater for thirsts rather than architectural appreciation. Twelve years later, they replaced corrugated iron with a structure of sun-dried bricks that became the new Vulcan: it stood until early 1914 when it was burned down. In its turn it was replaced by red brick which was also destroyed by fire. The Vulcan’s licence was transferred at this time to the Ballarat Hotel, which was not in use.

It had been built in 1882 and is the uniquely handsome little Vulcan Hotel in my illustration.
Through the left hand door is a narrow, intimate public bar and beyond that, the lounge bar. There are four accommodation rooms, one of which is said to be haunted. The hotel is owned by a company mainly consisting of local shareholders. I can’t think of a nicer place to hold a shareholders meeting.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
.

Brian Boru Hotel, Thames

I wrote and illustrated ‘The Good Old Kiwi Pub’. It was published in 1995 and was a snapshot of some New Zealand pubs as they were at the end of the 20th century. I have decided to share some of the entries from the book from time to time on this blog.

Like all old gold towns Thames has been home to large numbers of pubs. In fact, when the 1855 Reefers Arms changed its name to Brian Boru in 1867 there were probably more pubs in Thames than there were in Auckland. While that’s no longer the case, Thames still rates as a big town and it’s booming again. This time it’s not gold that brings prosperity but solid enterprises like car assembly and the ever increasing numbers of tourists who are discovering the Coromandel Peninsula.

Today’s Brian Boru, built in 1905 by Edmund Twohill, stayed in the family for 106 years with four generations of Twohills operating it until 1974 when it was sold to a brace of property developers. For a few years this cherished old hotel lost its way; there was nobody around to look after it and things got so bad that the citizens started to give it nasty nicknames like ‘The Pits’ and took their patronage elsewhere.

It was rescued in June 1983 when entrepreneur Barbara Doyle bought it and set out to return it to its former glory. She has made the Brian Boru famous through her insight, dedication and business acumen. Perhaps the most laudable thing she’s done is to preserve its original form; even the recent additions have been harmonious.

The Brian Boru plays host to over ten thousand guests a year, a large percentage of whom are international visitors who enjoy the ambience, and shiver with delight on hearing stories of the ghosts remaining from the old gold mining era. (Head ghost is Florence Twohill who, with her sister, ran the Brian Boru in the twenties).

And speaking of pub ghosts - Barbara Doyle’s ‘Mystery, Intrigue and Murder Weekends’ have achieved great fame. In true Agatha Christie style, guests are invited to take part in solving mysteries in the Brian Boru where ‘windows rattle, floorboards creak and ghosts come out after midnight’. There’s a reward for the successful sleuth and ‘the unlucky victim’s estate receives a 50% “mourning” refund’!

This is a big hotel where, I think, one gets a good impression of the activity and energy found in the coaching inns of the nineteenth century.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.n.

Country Churches of NZ 110. St. Patrick's, Macraes Flat, Otago

I wrote and illustrated Country Churches of New Zealand. It was published in 2002 by New Holland, Publishers and is still on sale in bookshops. The publishers have kindly agreed to me re-publishing some of the book’s images and descriptions in this blog.

ST. PATRICK’S, MACRAES FLAT

Near derelict and deserted, its dark nave a dump for old mattresses, St. Patrick's now stands like a forlorn folly among tall pines.

It was de-consecrated around 1998, but its origin is unclear. It dates at least from 1882 for it appears in an apparently accurate watercolour painting of Macraes township dated January 1883.

It was built of plaster-rendered local schist with Oamaru stone facings and is, apart from its decay, unaltered from its original state. One wonders what its fate will be now that it and its auriferous land are owned by a gold mining company.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
.