ee 1857, the Otago Provincial Council offered : nei reward of £500 t t anyone who made a good gold discovery in the Otago area, The man who the award was Gabriel Read, working beside the Tuapeka Stream with an tin dish and a butcher's knife. In an hour or two he panned about 200 gra of gold. The mere sight of gold brought hidden poetry out in him. The gol said, “was shining like the stars of Orion on a dark, frosty night.” (This ar: where he made his gold strike was later to be named Gabriel's Gully. By g ‘Agolden gully!) Anyhow, a rush began. People came not only from Dunedin but, as the news became international, prospectors, wildly waving their tin dishes an butcher's knives, burst in from Australia and the United States. Knowledg people noticed evidence of gold-bearing rock, and word got around. Spirit leapt. (Mine would have leaped too. Gold!) A mere two years later there w 11,000 people in and around Gabriel's Gully. No doubt many of them still tin dishes and butcher's knives, but mining was becoming more sophistici ‘The population of Otago jumped from 13,000 to over 30,000, and the 186 ~a bit of a boom time - earned more than £21 million for New Zealand.