Author(s): Shaun Brown

NZ History

The Cornish tinners who answered the siren call of the Otago gold rush achieved the alchemist's dream, converting the base metal they worked at home to gold on the Maniototo Plain. The precious metal they clawed from the Otago soil set them up, but it was the boundless opportunities their new land offered that gave them lasting rewards. It took courage, tenacity and sacrifice to seize those rewards, a price the offspring of two large Cornish mining families were prepared to pay. Their legacies, on the land, in big business and on the nation's sports fields, endure today.