The West Coast Gold Rush: When Hokitika Was New Zealand's Largest City

By 1864, the easy pickings in Otago were running thin. The Shotover and Arrow rivers had been worked and reworked. Miners were getting restless. So when rumours began to circulate about gold on the West Coast — that wild, rain-soaked strip of land between the Alps and the Tasman Sea — thousands packed up and headed over the mountains.

First Finds

The first major discovery came in 1864 when two Māori, Ihaia Tainui and Haimona Taukau, found gold near the Taramakau River. More discoveries followed at Greenstone Creek — named for the pounamu that Māori had been collecting there for centuries — and suddenly the rush was on.

Getting to the West Coast wasn't easy. The mountains were brutal. The bush was thick. The rivers flooded without warning. But miners came anyway — by the thousand, then by the tens of thousands — hacking tracks through the forest and wading through waist-deep swamps.

By 1865, strikes at Ōkārito, Charleston, and the Grey River had transformed the coast into a continuous string of tent cities and shanty towns.

Hokitika: Suburb of Melbourne

Hokitika became the gateway to the goldfields. Its port — really just a sandbar at the mouth of a river — was treacherous. Dozens of ships ran aground; the bar claimed lives every season. But the gold kept coming, and so did the ships.

In 1867, Hokitika's port handled more shipping tonnage than any other in New Zealand. More than Auckland. More than Wellington. The town had over 100 pubs and a population exceeding 25,000 — making it, briefly, the largest settlement in the colony.

So many of the miners were Australian veterans that Hokitika was sometimes called a "suburb of Melbourne." The accent in the pubs was more Victorian than Kiwi, and much of the gold was shipped directly to Australia.

A Different Kind of Gold

West Coast gold was different from Otago. Instead of coarse nuggets in river gravels, much of the gold here was fine "flour" gold, mixed with black sand on the beaches and in the creek beds. It required patience, technique, and often specialized equipment to extract.

The landscape was also more challenging. Rain — endless, relentless rain — turned everything to mud. Sandflies tormented the miners. The bush grew back almost as fast as it was cleared. Many prospectors gave up and went home.

But those who stayed did well. The West Coast ultimately became New Zealand's second-richest goldfield, after Otago, producing millions of ounces over several decades.

Legacy

The West Coast gold rush peaked around 1867 and declined rapidly as the easily worked ground was exhausted. Hokitika shrank from a city to a small town. Many of the settlements simply vanished back into the bush.

But the infrastructure remained. The tracks through the forest became roads. The shanty towns became permanent communities. The West Coast's identity as a frontier region — independent, resourceful, a little bit wild — was forged in those few frantic years.

Today, you can still pan for gold at several designated areas on the West Coast, includingNelson Creek,Moonlight Creek, and the tributaries of the Grey River. The gold is harder to find now — but it's still there, waiting in the black sand.