First there was Blackadderville in Canterbury, now there is Mount Blackadder.
However All Black captain Todd Blackadder cannot take all the credit for this one.
Canterbury gold prospector Bill Gardner, 52, named the previously unnamed peak in Maruia, Buller, after one of Toddy's ancestors, William Blackadder. The change has just been approved by the New Zealand Geographic Board.
William Blackadder, a farmer, forest service ranger and gold prospector, was one of the early European settlers in the area. He was an Inangahua councillor for 30 years and a writer. He dreamed up the design for a small alluvial screening plant for gold, which his sons later built.
Mr Gardner said he had named the mountain as a tribute to the whole Blackadder family, because of their kindness and because he was appalled at the treatment Williams sons Afton and Bill, had received at the hands of the Department of Conservation over their gold claim.
Mr Gardner took over a gold claim from Afton and Bill Blackadder, now aged in their 80s, in the mid nineties.
The claim, a virgin glacial goldfield known as the Shenandoah field, is estimated by geologists to be one of the richest gold deposits in the world.
The Blackadder brothers first proposed a mine in the early 1980s, and were eventually granted a mining concession which was revoked ten days after issue.
The brothers were devastated by the decision and eventually sold their claim to Mr Gardner.
- CHRISTCHURCH STAR
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