Chinese town takes shape on goldfields

Archaeologists are on the verge of digging up a complete Chinese village from the Otago goldrush of the 1860s.

The site, beside State Highway 8 on the outskirts of Lawrence, the gateway to the Otago goldfields, contains the remains of the largest Chinese camp in the country.

It is part of a 5ha section owned by the Lawrence Chinese Camp Charitable Trust, led by retired Dunedin doctor and historian Jim Ng.

The trust plans to replicate part of the village as a tourist attraction after excavation is completed, probably in two to three years.

The camp occupied 1ha and in its heyday was home to about 70 residents. It had more than 25 buildings, including the Empire Hotel, one of the last remaining structures there.

The excavation is being conducted by the Historic Places Trust and Otago University anthropology department's Southern Pacific Archaeological Research.

Richard Walter, from Otago University, said the dig, beginning at Labour Weekend and lasting about a month, would be the crucial one.

"This is going to provide the basic information needed for the reconstruction of the historic settlement."

Dr Walter described the location as unique in New Zealand in that it was not a mining site, but a Chinese village within a mining zone.

"This is a service centre similar to the service centres like Lawrence, but it's different because the Chinese were evicted from Lawrence - a bylaw was passed to kick them out," he said.

"So what they did was set up a service town of their own. What we have here is an 1860s south China village located in New Zealand."

It was an entire township with a full range of facilities, from Chinese doctors and pharmacies to opium dens, and was significant for archaeological, anthropological and historical reasons.

"This was an entire ethnic enclave displaced from their homeland," Dr Walter said.

A first dig conducted over two weeks in March revealed a surprisingly well-preserved site.

"What we found, underneath fairly thin topsoil, was that the structures were intact, everything from ground level down."

That dig identified the layout of the settlement and also uncovered opium gear, whisky bottles, coins, marbles and other paraphernalia from what was the home of a wealthy businessman, former Empire Hotel owner Sam Chew Lain.

Dr Ng said the camp was at the gateway to the goldfields, "so it had the most powerful merchants and it had the best Chinese doctors, it had the most important interpreters and so forth".

Chinese people lived there until 1945.

The goldrush

* Gold was discovered at Gabriels Gully, near Lawrence, in 1861, sparking the first major gold rush in Otago.

* The first Chinese miners arrived at Lawrence in 1866 without their families.

* They originally aimed to make money and return to China.

* Lawrence became the most important Chinese camp in the Otago goldfields.

- NZPA