Image: Julia Wells | Creative Commons
 Lyell Cemetery
Lyell Cemetery

Located in Lyell area and Westport area in the West Coast region

Walk through a former Catholic Church site and native beech forest which leads to a picturesque goldfield cemetery.

Leaving from the campsite, the track passes the former Catholic Church site and enters native beech forest clinging to a steep hillside and leads on to one of the more picturesque goldfield cemeteries.  Surviving headstones, some in iron-fenced plots with large trees growing out of them, tell stories of short lives and tragic deaths.  Between 30 and 40 people were buried here from 1880 to 1900.

Another ten minutes on you will come to Maori Bar, the site of the first gold strike in 1862. There is a tunnel which later miners drove through solid rock to dewater the creek bed for easier mining.

Cross the creek at the junction to the Old Ghost Road and continue on to the Croesus Battery. 

The track begins at the Lyell Conservation campsite near the former Lyell town site, 15 km north east from Inangahua Junction and 35 km south from Murchison on State Highway 6 in the Upper Buller Gorge.

Remain on the main tracks. Decades of prospecting and mining have made the countryside unsafe with deep shafts concealed in the undergrowth. Suitable footwear and clothing is recommended along with insect repellant when lingering at the interpretative panels along the way.

Lyell retains many reminders of a rich past which can be seen while walking up to the Croesus Battery and around the cemetery.

Protect this heritage site and leave artifacts where you find them to allow future generations to experience what life was like for those hardy pioneers.