A HISTORY OF BLACKBALL: WHO WERE THE DIGGERS? 1865-1869

Gold diggers who toiled in the shingle beds of Blackball during the 1860s were ‘men of all nationalities,’ notes Alexander Bowkett.[i] Not that all of them were men; a good many were boys. A few were women. The first goldseekers to have washed the creeks seem to have been Māori, which is not surprising because the young and fit in many tribes were keen to seek gold and were the pioneer diggers in the watershed of the Buller. Afterwards they were the pioneer diggers in the Grey Valley. They worked in parties of men, women, girls and boys. And they were ‘ever restless’ to find new fields, in the words of the Greymouth gold buyer, Reuben Waite.[ii]
    After them came men and boys from overseas; Britain, Ireland, the United States, Scandinavia and Germany – and later China and Italy.
     The two kingdoms of Great Britain sent hundreds of men and boys to Blackball. A lot of them made almost no mark. One was Alfred Rayment from Burnham, Essex; he was about thirty at the time of the first rush to Blackball.[iii] Another was William Grant from Forfar, Scotland; he was a few years older.[iv] Also some young men came to the diggings from the principality of Wales. One was Henry Francis from Caermarthen.[v]
     Irish diggers came to goldfields mostly from Clare, Limerick, Tipperary, Kings and Kilkenny.[vi] One of them was James Kelly from Kilkenny. [vii] Catholic as well as Irish, the way of life of these men and boys often differed markedly from the Germans, Scandinavians, English and Scots.
     Americans from the Yankee states and from the former Confederacy swarmed to the diggings on the West Coast. Almost all of them were of German, British, Irish or Scandinavian ancestry. George Thomasson, for example, who came from Bangor, Maine, was the son of Scandinavian forebears before ending up a digger at Ford Creek.[viii]
     Germans went everywhere on the diggings. They made key finds on Blackball Creek and gave their name to the tributary of German Gully. German goldseekers seem mostly to have hailed from the north rather than the south of their homeland, making them Protestant rather than Catholic, which in turn made it easy for them to blend with the English, Scots and Scandinavians. Among the Scandinavians, the most numerous were Norwegians. Frederick Olsen from Drammen, Norway, was in his mid twenties at the time of the first rush to Blackball.[ix] Frederick Langren, in his  mid thirties, was another forgotten Norwegian.[x]
     Chinese goldseekers would become a big group working the shingles along Ford Creek. Almost all of them came from the province of Guangdong. Italians would find their way to the reefs at Upper Blackball. ‘The Italians seemed to be in considerable numbers,’ notes Alexander Bowkett.[xi]
     Almost none of these diggers stayed on the diggings. The mass of them camped and dug for no more than a year or two, or for a few weeks, or even for no more than a day or two, before swagging up and heading away forever from Blackball.

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[i] Bowkett, Alexander, Centennial of Blackball 1866-1966, Greymouth 1966, p. 7.
[ii] Waite, Reuben, A Narrative of the Discovery of the West Coast Gold-Fields, Nelson 1869 (new edition Christchurch 1998), p. 18.
[iii] Grey River Argus, 19 December 1891.
[iv] Grey River Argus, 12 April 1894.
[v] Grey River Argus, 2 October 1893.
[vi] Fraser, Lyndon, ‘Irish Migration to the West Coast, 1864-1900,’ New Zealand Journal of History 34, October 2000, p. 203.
[vii] Grey River Argus, 28 September 1893.
[viii] Grey River Argus, 10 October 1890.
[ix] Grey River Argus, 19 September 1892.
[x] Grey River Argus, 21 April 1896.
[xi] Bowkett, Alexander, Centennial of Blackball 1866-1966, Greymouth 1966, p. 7.