the school teacher at Gillespie’s, who would have been Henry Williams, had rushed up to Ross and brought back a doctor. Another report said it was a Maori. Regardless, the patient died.
There had been what has been described as a dredging boom both in Otago and on the Coast, as the design of dredges evolved. The first dredges on the Coast were simple spoon dredges which lifted the blacksand into a sluice box or on to gold-saving tables. Bucket lines eventually replaced the spoon dredge with the development of an elevator fitted to the stern to stack tailings. A total of 58 dredges had worked the West Coast by 1902, both inland and along the beach, many of which proved a poor investment because their construction was too light to move the obstacles encountered. Dredging continues today with the huge increase in the price of gold making this industry remunerative.
In 1894, A.P. Harper commented in his book, Pioneer Work in the Alps of New Zealand, that many of the inhabitants of Gillespie’s were not on speaking terms. He had problems getting his mail from the Post Office there because of that behaviour. Charles Douglas expanded on this in one of his reports: “Last year’s survey report gives the Fox Glacier with trimmings and I suppose it will be the last exploration of it for some years to come. I at least don’t want to see either it or that district again unless the present inhabitants get exterminated. The law which permits people from murdering each other ought, in my opinion, to be modified in the case of the Okarito and Gillespie’s districts. If Gillespie’s is bad it can’t hold a candle to the Paringa in the matter of quarrelling. There are three parties on the river, all Irish, and the excitable brand at that. How any are alive is a mystery.”
Charles Douglas was reported to be the first European to explore many of Westland’s valleys. Like others, he had been attracted to the West Coast during the gold rush of the 1860s and in the following decades explored the rivers and also the glaciers. He
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