Historic Bendigo

Exploring historic Bendigo

The 1085 hectares of Bendigo’s adjoining historic and scenic reserves are popular with visitors. They provide easy and interesting opportunities for day trips in the area.

Come In Time Battery,
Bendigo Historic Reserve

A feature of the historic reserve is the range of relics from Bendigo’s hard-rock, quartz mining days. This has made it an important part of the Otago Gold Fields Park, providing plenty of opportunities to explore what's left of that important and colourful part of the region’s past.

There was much more than just traces of gold here. As a result there’s plenty of evidence of mining activity in the late 19th century. Most of the original foundations of the Matilda and Aurora stamper battery sites are where they were abandoned. Mining shafts (vertical) and adits (horizontal) are also a feature. The larger shafts are either fenced off or covered, but many others could present a danger.

View down shaft at Alta mining site 

There are old and often very deep mining shafts throughout this area. Extreme care must be taken and children closely supervised

Goldmining history

Gold was found here in 1862 which brought an immediate influx of miners and prospectors clambering over the hills in search of the elusive metal. Initially the gold was alluvial and easier to extract but that petered out in 1865. Then gold-bearing quartz reefs were discovered and the focus went underground. Successfully too; in 1875 the Bendigo reef was said to be the richest and best defined in Otago. Mining continued in various forms, with varying degrees of success up to 1943, when a government mining subsidy was withdrawn. Since then there has been some activity in the 1980s and again early this century with renewed prospecting interest.

The historic reserve preserves the gold mining relics of the hard rock quartz mining that took place here – a fascinating legacy that’s easily seen today. There are numerous mine shafts, tunnels and plenty of other remains: stone huts, stamper batteries, heavy machinery, water races, dams and pipelines. Extreme care should be taken here due to both the nature of the country and the possibility of unexpectedly coming across a shaft, children need to be well supervised.

Māori

There is no record of Māori history or artefacts from Bendigo. Thomsons Saddle was a route for Māori travelling from coastal Otago to Wanaka, and the mountain passes beyond leading to the West Coast settlements.

Farming

This was part of the huge Morven Hills Station taken up by the McLean family in 1858. In 1910 it was broken into a number of smaller stations and Bendigo and Ardgour were two of them. A succession of runholders then battled both the elements and rabbits. Today Bendigo is successfully farmed for high quality fine wool and has established  successful vineyard operations.