Rare photo of Gabriels Gully

Press, 16 April 1979, Page 2

Rare photo of Gabriels Gully

PA Dunedin A previously unknown photograph of the Gabriel’s Gully goldfield has appeared unexpectedly in the McNab collection of the Dunedin Public Library. Historians regard the discovery las being nearly as dramatic, in its own way, as the original gold strike of Gabriel Read. The photograph, badly faded with age, was found among the papers of W. B. D. Mantell, the Commissioner for Crown Lands for Otago in the 1850 s, who later became the member of Parliament for Wallace. ■ Accompanying the photograph is a detailed key, signed by the commissioner

[of the goldfield, A. Chetham Strode. According to the McNab collection librarina, Mr K. Cunningham, it provides “the fullest information we have about the organisation of the site.” The date of the photograph is September 30, 1861, four months after Read’s historic discovery. At this date there were thousands of miners on the site, and the impact they made on the gully has already been shown by the only other early photograph that has survived. This new discovery shows the township of “Gibraltar,” which was the commercial and administrative centre of the goldfield.