St Bathans - 1877

St Bathans is a small town in the Maniototo with a history of gold mining. On a recent trip there I was reading a run-of-the-mill information board and noticed the photograph accompanying it. It was unexpectedly large and incredibly detailed for such an old image. Tagged in the corner was Burton Bros – a photography studio that operated in Dunedin between 1866 and 1914. The studio sold prints to the general public, and has many landscapes and portraits of old New Zealand.

Some of the original photographic plates had been preserved and purchased by Te Papa. The museum has scanned them and has made the collection available on the internet. I’ve gone through the collection, done some minor and tasteful touchups to the St Bathans photographs, and am sharing them here.

The gold rush in St Bathans started in 1862. One could think of the surface and stream-based gold mining done in the early days, giving way into the extensive hydraulic sluicing portrayed in these photographs. Some of the photographs have the date written on them, I’ve added that as a caption. The others are undated, but were likely taken between 1869 and 1879.

The photograph above is the only confirmed image from 1869. Compare the look and construction of the St Bathans township just ten years later.