Peer Reviewed Journal Articles by Dr Lloyd Carpenter
Journal of Australasian Mining History, 2013
Hills dotted with adits and shafts, the moonscape of old sluice workings and the untidy piles of ... more Hills dotted with adits and shafts, the moonscape of old sluice workings and the untidy piles of mullock that mark a former quartz mine are all typical elements in a landscape shaped by a gold rush. In Otago the prevalence of such landscapes means that for many places, the full history detailing gold yields, mining enterprises, technologies employed and the miners that worked them, are largely lost or forgotten by locals.
he Otago gold rush has not received the level of academic scrutiny and analysis accorded to simil... more he Otago gold rush has not received the level of academic scrutiny and analysis accorded to similar events in Australia, despite occasional incisive scholarly (but unpublished) theses lining university library shelves. 1 Consequently, accounts of the Otago rush have tended to be the preserve of local enthusiasts, writing historical narratives rather than in-depth examination of cultural historical aspects of the goldfields. Notwithstanding this limitation, some books, such as those produced for the Otago Centennial Publications in 1951, are compelling histories by writers who were participants in the events they describe. 2 The writers' proximity to the action does not render their texts free from error; written without the use of computers, online resources like the National Library's paperspast site 3 or archival sources in Archives New Zealand and the Hocken Library, means that gaps in the historic record were sometimes bridged with speculation or reasoned interpolation. This paper deals with one example of this type of interpretation and through gleaning new information from primary sources, rewrites a key part of the received narrative from the earliest days of Bendigo, Central Otago. The received narrative James Crombie Parcell, a prominent and well-respected Cromwell lawyer, wrote the Heart of the Desert to detail the gold, farming and governmental history of the Cromwell region, which included Bendigo Gully. In reaching the conclusion that the discovery of the Cromwell Company's riches was predicated on a brazen fraud committed by Thomas Logan, he constructed the foundations upon which every subsequent writer has discussed the first years of quartz mining at Bendigo. According to Parcell, Thomas Logan had gone to Bendigo in 1863 and taken up a quartz claim that nobody would look at. He could produce some wonderful specimens of goldstudded quartz which people would only admire and throw away. Nothing but alluvial mining was considered worthwhile. Logan, while working as an ordinary miner most of his time, fought steadily from 1863 to 1866 to get someone with money to come into partnership with him and open up the reef. At last, on the strength of the report Julian Coates made in 1865, a party of Dunedin capitalists formed the Bendigo Quartz Mining Company and took up sixteen and a half acres of land, including Logan's area. Logan thought they were treating him unfairly and retaliated in kind by losing the leader and running out on poor, hungry stone. The syndicate soon got tired of it and dropped the claim which Logan promptly took up again. But Bendigo was away to a bad start, being dubbed a duffer by all those who did not know the inside story. 4 T
Journal of Australasian Mining History, 2014
In 150 years of Otago gold rush historiography, it has been persistantly argued that the earliest... more In 150 years of Otago gold rush historiography, it has been persistantly argued that the earliest reports of gold finds in the decade from 1848 to 1858 were suppressed, hidden, or actively discredited by the local government leadership working with compliant newspaper editors. Recent publications have increased the intensity of this argument, yet examination of the newspaper reports from the time reveals an entirely different story.
The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture, 2018
On the road between the famed tourist hubs of Wanaka and Arrowtown on New Zealand's South Island ... more On the road between the famed tourist hubs of Wanaka and Arrowtown on New Zealand's South Island lies the former 1860s gold-rush-era town of Cardrona. There, beside an immaculately kept heritage precinct of nineteenth-century wooden buildings, tourists pause at the Cardrona Hotel, an architectural relic of the rush for gold in Central Otago. This hotel has emerged in guidebooks and local histories, and on social media sites and ratings guides, as a tourism and craft beer 'must-do' and, according to Heritage New Zealand, has become New Zealand's most photographed hotel. Its popularity defies belief and even logic, and yet each new visitor to the region appears determined to leave with at least one photograph of its distinctive facade in their portfolio. The story behind the survival of the heritage-listed structure and its elevation to the heights of popular and tourist culture 'icon' status stems from a combination of its remote location, the enduring romanticization of the gold rush, a succession of eccentric owners, the mythopoeia of a popular book from the 1950s and its inclusion in a brewer's marketing campaign. Each has scaffolded the Cardrona Hotel to become iconic to the gold-rush era, heritage tourism and New Zealand's popular culture and identity. introduCtion On the spectacular Crown Range Road between the Central Otago tourist boom towns of Wanaka and Arrowtown on the South Island of New Zealand lies the old gold-rush town of Cardrona. There, among new schist 02_AJPC_7.2_Carpenter_209-224.indd 209 8/1/18 12:26 PM
This article reviews the concept of provenance from both contemporary and traditional aspects. Th... more This article reviews the concept of provenance from both contemporary and traditional aspects. The incorporation of indigenous meanings and conceptualizations of belonging into provenance are explored. First, we consider how the gradual transformation of marketplaces into market and consumer activism catalyzed the need for provenance. Guided by this, we discuss the meaning of provenance from an indigenous and non-indigenous rationale. Driven by the need for a qualitative understanding of food, the scholarship has utilized different epistemologies to demonstrate how authentic connections are cultivated and protected by animistic approaches. As a tool to mobilize place, we suggest that provenance should be embedded in the immediate local context. Historic place-based indigenous knowledge systems, values, and lifeways should be seen as a model for new projects. This review offers a comprehensive collection of research material with emphasis on a variety of fields including anthropology...
M/C Journal
For many, the very idea of ‘history’ calls into question narratives of the past, distant and disc... more For many, the very idea of ‘history’ calls into question narratives of the past, distant and disconnected from our contemporary moment, and out of tune with the media-centred world of our post-2000 popular culture. This approach to history, however, is based on profound misconceptions, and does not take into account the fact that the present is history: we experience our historical moment via multiple and multi-faceted media practices, from using social media to watching movies, from watching television to consuming food. The past is, in turn, never far removed from our contemporary and everyday experiences, informing not only the way we live now, but the ways in which our futures are cemented. Ever cogniscant of this, history is changing and evolving. As Anthony Grafton put it in 2007, the function of history is “giving multiple methods and practices a place to meet, as antiquarianism intersected with ecclesiastical history, both collided with law, and all of them in turn experienc...
The history of Mäori miners at the Aorere gold rush in 1856–1858 is well documented in research b... more The history of Mäori miners at the Aorere gold rush in 1856–1858 is well documented in research by Hilary and John Mitchell. Philip Ross May examined the multilayered history of Mäori in the goldfi elds of the Buller and Westland, and the full story of the convoluted machinations of government agents and miners and their dealings with the Mäori of the Coromandel are becoming known as Treaty of Waitangi hearings examine the past. However, the story of the Mäori miners of Otago has remained relatively unknown, beyond a few legends offered as exotic participants parenthetic to the real events of the gold rush there. On closer examination it is clear that the true history of Mäori miners in Central Otago is far richer, more complex, and much older than is widely known. This article examines this history until the mid1860s.
I am currently working on turning my thesis on the Central Otago gold rush into a book. Some of t... more I am currently working on turning my thesis on the Central Otago gold rush into a book. Some of the papers on this site will be re-worked for this purpose. I do not intend that any of my papers appear in anyone else's book before then (this is more of a threat than a hint). Abstract - 150 years ago, the carefully-planned Presbyterian settlement of Dunedin was torn apart by the discovery that nearly every stream in Otago was laden with gold. The population exploded, adding the accents of Greece, Tipperary, Victoria, California, Guangdong and the King Country to the Scots burr which had been predominant. Almost immediately a myth of identity emerged, typified by goldfields balladeer Charles Thatcher’s ‘Old Identity and New Iniquity’ and boosted by the histrionics of a press enamoured of the romanticised machinations of the Otago goldfields ‘digger’. This popular mythology conflates the imagery of California, Victoria and early Gabriel’s Gully to perpetuate stories of desperate, gold-mad miners swarming across the province fighting, drinking and whoring away sparse winnings in a vast and lawless land, where bodies float down the Clutha, diggers battle corrupt police and vast fortunes are won and lost. This thesis seeks to construct a de-mythologised account of the rush for Central Otago gold, examining the engineering processes, social dynamics and communal relationships implicit in the development of claims, the construction of goldfields structures, the growth of towns and the emergence of financial networks. This explains and reveals the social, technological and economic developments of the gold rush that wrought a profound change on the Otago landscape and to New Zealand’s history. Focusing on the New Zealand Department of Conservation’s historic reserve at Bendigo as an exemplary site, this thesis focuses on the people of the goldfields who left traces of themselves in archives, letters, newspapers, court records and in the heritage landscape to explain their mining, commercial and family lives, and concludes by exploring the remnants of their existence in the relic-strewn ghost-town. By elucidating the depth and breadth of relationships, processes and lives of the residents, miners and merchants, I refute the pervasive myth of innocent simplicity around the era to replace it with a surprisingly complex reality. This complexity is revealed in the new conclusions I draw around the myriad processes behind identity formation, rush events, water race construction, quartz mine development and labour relations, merchant finances and heritage remnants.
Australasian Historical Archaeology Journal of the Australasian Society For Historical Archaeology, Dec 1, 2012
An enduring legacy of the Central Otago gold rush is the network of water races crossing the land... more An enduring legacy of the Central Otago gold rush is the network of water races crossing the landscape. Lacking the romance of schist cottage ruins or hint of enterprise inherent in herringbone tailings, mullock heaps and dredging tailings, these watercourses are unremarkable except for their potential re-use for irrigation. But the employment and judicious use of water was critical to the development of gold claims, when self-taught hydraulic engineers organised, financed and built water races to open alluvial mining areas. The Rise and Shine syndicate worked their sluicing claim in Bendigo Creek’s headwaters for 35 years and changed the fortunes of the Bendigo Gully gold field. Examination of the syndicate and its archaeology reveals a group of miners who developed a profitable claim, built a community and proved adept at employing their water resource in a way that confounds popular tourism-oriented depictions of the gold rush as rootless men in ephemeral towns.
The International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology, 2013
The first dam on Central Otago’s Clutha River was not the 1956 Roxburgh dam, but a gold-mining en... more The first dam on Central Otago’s Clutha River was not the 1956 Roxburgh dam, but a gold-mining enterprise’s structure built 93 years earlier, when the river was still known as the Molyneux. If it had succeeded, it would be lauded with other colonial-era New Zealand engineering feats such as the Denniston Incline and Raurimu Spiral; because it failed, it is forgotten. In 1864, two years after the goldfield began, miners organised Cromwell businessmen as shareholders to form the Nil Desperandum Company. Where the Clutha was bifurcated by Knobby Island at Quartz Reef Point they would build a timber crib cofferdam at each end of the island and pump the enclosed space dry to mine the riverbed. The upstream structure was to be built at 45° to the flow, 270 metres long, 15 metres thick and 7.5 metres high, constructed from timber frameworks filled with stone and backed by an additional rockfill buttress. This paper discusses this engineering feat, including how it was built, what it achieved and when the methodology was used elsewhere in New Zealand.
Labour History, 2013
The historic reserve at the goldfields-era ghost town of Bendigo is a spectacularly beautiful pla... more The historic reserve at the goldfields-era ghost town of Bendigo is a spectacularly beautiful place of stone ruins, abandoned cottages and mining detritus scattered across a quintessential Central Otago landscape. The archaeological landscape features one atypical ruin, the remains of a very substantial house. Unlike similar structures which have crumbled naturally through years of exposure to the extreme Bendigo climate, it was deliberately wrecked during a bitter industrial dispute in 1881. This conflict tore the community apart, as in scenes reminiscent of Highland Clearances and Irish Land League battles, armed police oversaw the employer-decreed destruction of homes and the eviction of families in what was the only New Zealand dispute to escalate into this sort of extreme behaviour. I used contemporary local and regional newspaper reports to examine the events of the strike and discuss the profoundly polarised parties in the dispute, highlighting some unique aspects of the events in the context of New Zealand’s labour history.
Journal of Australian Studies, 2013
Bendigo is the name of an Australian city with a golden past, an historic reserve centred on a Ce... more Bendigo is the name of an Australian city with a golden past, an historic reserve centred on a Central Otago ghost town, a Pennsylvanian State Park and a former All-England champion boxer. The name “Bendigo” appears on hotel signs, gold dredges and mining claims in several countries and is on the nameplate of a Confederate blockade runner wrecked off North Carolina. More than an example of an early global brand, “Bendigo” acquired a peculiar significance throughout narratives of colonial Australasia with the town remembered in an unusually rapid, unique nostalgiacising process. This article examines the way the name developed and the manner in which the Australian Bendigo emerged through legend, memory and pioneering mythology to become an assiduously romanticised “Old Bendigo” and how this influenced the perception of people from there.
" Abstract - Gold rushes are exciting events marked by the construction and collapse of ... more " Abstract - Gold rushes are exciting events marked by the construction and collapse of boom settlements, of miners rushing from one place to the next and of stories of rich finds and ‘duffer’ hoaxes which become the legends defining the era. One such goldfields settlement is Bendigo, a rush town of the Central Otago gold rush. A lack of documentary sources has led to writers speculating and misinterpreting the timeline of the events which caused the town to appear. Re-analysing the journal on which the narratives have been based, together with additional documentary evidence leads to new conclusions about when this town became an important centre of mining in Otago and reveals an intriguing study of some of the personalities of the early Bendigo goldfield."
In: Proceedings of 'On the Surface: The Heritage of Mines and Mining', Innsbruck,... more In: Proceedings of 'On the Surface: The Heritage of Mines and Mining', Innsbruck, Austria, April 14-16, 2011, Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change, Leeds Metropolitan University with the University of Innsbruck. Publisher: Leeds Beckett University Publication date: June 1, 2011 ISBN: 9781907240256 Abstract: For seventy years alluvial miners, sluicing syndicates, quartz companies and dredgemen focused their efforts, investment capital and lives on Bendigo in Central Otago, New Zealand. Historical evidence of this quintessential nineteenth century mining settlement survives in shafts, sluice faces and quartz battery sites, while echoes of its people remain in four abandoned townships. This starkly beautiful location is a magnet for photographers, but these vistas, while spectacular, decontextualise Bendigo as a place of habitation; absent the narratives of its founders, the site risks becoming a meaningless Arcadia, profoundly divorced from its mining heritage. Hence the challenge to the government custodians of Bendigo, who must oversee its transfer from farm holding to public ownership to ensure its preservation as an historical reserve. Present visitors are forced to reconstruct Bendigo from visual cues alone, with little to conclude from the hotel sites, house ruins and mining detritus except that these are traces of a tough life lived by anonymous people from a long forgotten past. My role, in collaborating on a heritage-quality narrative of Bendigo for public presentation at the site, is to populate its ruins with the people who lived, loved and lost there, telling the mining story, but telling also the reality of daily life and work; placing people in the town when it was a community of immigrants in a new and strange land. This narrative must be constructed in association with the New Zealand Department of Conservation, an owner constrained by reduced funding and increasing responsibilities; an organisation with conflicting goals, charged with satisfying the mounting interest from locals, amateur historians and tourists keen to understand and experience the Otago goldfields ‘Heritage’.
Reviews by Dr Lloyd Carpenter
' ...a comprehensive, balanced and perceptive account' --Michael Grimshaw, NZ Listener &#... more ' ...a comprehensive, balanced and perceptive account' --Michael Grimshaw, NZ Listener 'This account by Massey University history professor Peter Lineham is fascinating, detailed and more nuanced than the media coverage Tamaki attracted. Lineham puts the ambitious church in context, nationally and internationally.' --Philip Matthews, Weekend Press While Destiny Church began in 1998, it rose to notoriety in 2004 with its 'Enough is Enough' march against what it deemed society's declining moral standards. Destiny and its leader Brian Tamaki have since become a significant - if controversial - presence in New Zealand's religious, political and Maori worlds. But what is Destiny? What does it stand for? Who are its followers? Destiny, written by respected commentator Peter Lineham, is the first full and independent account of the church and its personnel. With unprecedented access to its inner workings, including interviews with Bishop Brian Tamaki and other pastors, Lineham reveals the truth about the man and the movement, addressing the public's questions and fears, and delivering a fascinating picture of the organisation on the eve of launching its 'City of God'.
Books by Dr Lloyd Carpenter
Australian Journal of Politics & History
Book Chapters by Dr Lloyd Carpenter
Chapter in (Eds.) Keir Reeves, Geoff Bird, Birger Stichelbaut, Jean Bourgeois, "Battlefi... more Chapter in (Eds.) Keir Reeves, Geoff Bird, Birger Stichelbaut, Jean Bourgeois, "Battlefield Events: Landscape, Commemoration and Heritage", Routledge Advances in Events Research Book Series, in press, due Oct. 2015. Abstract: The Battle of Gate Pā at Pukehinahina, Tauranga on 29 April 1864 is uniquely remembered among the conflicts of the nineteenth century New Zealand Land Wars. It is significant for the two Victoria Crosses awarded and for the fact that despite a massive artillery bombardment and an attack by 1700 experienced imperial troops, it represented an embarrassing and costly defeat by an entrenched Māori defending force of just 230 warriors. The battle is memorialised by carvings, an historic reserve, regular commemorations and has a permanent hold in the consciousness of New Zealanders for the significant chivalric acts of compassion by the Māori defenders acting under a defined code of conduct. Several warriors distinguished themselves to care for British wounded, and so ensured that subsequent memorials and events commemorated the battle in spirit of reconciliation, not bitterness. In re-rehearsing this unique code over the subsequent 150 years, the battle has emerged as iconic for reinforcing New Zealand’s ideals in terms of bicultural relations. This meant that the 2014 sesquicentennial commemorations on the battleground were notable for their observation of both European and Māori culture, but also for unique expressions of pageantry and remembrance that meant for each side in the conflict, memories of Gate Pā were symbolic of these ideals in a way that is represented at no other New Zealand historic site.
Spare by Dr Lloyd Carpenter
Journal of Australasian Mining History, Nov 2, 2011
The received narrative of the discovery of the rich quartz mine at Bendigo in Central Otago, has ... more The received narrative of the discovery of the rich quartz mine at Bendigo in Central Otago, has the success of Thomas Logan, Jack Garrett, Brian Hebden and George Goodger of the Cromwell Company predicated on a fraud committed by Logan. It is an intriguing tale of a significant theft by a dishonest man in the midst of a famous gold rush to an iconic town and is found in all popular histories of the goldfield. But is it correct? Using primary sources and contemporary narratives, the evidence of Logan’s actions during the early days at Bendigo is evaluated and a new conclusion reached.
Uploads
Peer Reviewed Journal Articles by Dr Lloyd Carpenter
Reviews by Dr Lloyd Carpenter
Books by Dr Lloyd Carpenter
Book Chapters by Dr Lloyd Carpenter
Spare by Dr Lloyd Carpenter