Ōkārito

Farther south, miners found gold in a setting very different from an Otago gully.

At Five Mile Beach near Okarito, the richest ground lay in black sand.

An official report later put the number at work at around three thousand, with some men said to have made between six hundred and twelve hundred pounds in earnings in roughly three months.

By early 1866, Okarito itself had around fifteen hundred people, with thousands more on nearby beaches.

Stores and hotels served one of the busiest small ports on the coast.

For a moment, people even talked about a university.

Within eighteen months, much of the population had gone.

Canvas and timber suited a place whose permanence depended on what the next stretch of wash would yield.