Clutha River
The Clutha River / Mata-Au is the second longest river in New Zealand and the longest in the South Island. It flows south-southeast through Central and South Otago from Lake Wānaka in the Southern Alps to the Pacific Ocean, south west of Dunedin. Gold is in abundance in the Clutha River and its surrounding areas. It is the highest volume river in New Zealand, and has a discharging mean flow of.
The Clutha River played a prominent role in both the Māori and European history of the area. Rivers and valleys were the main transport system used by local Māori to access the interior of the South Island. The 1860s Otago gold rush resulted in the production of approximately 240 tonnes of gold, which was found in the Clutha catchment. It has the biggest catchment and outflow in New Zealand. About 6% of all water in the South Island is discharged by the Clutha River alone. It has a mean discharge of approximately and a catchment area of around and is an economically significant river for the country. The Clutha River encompasses two hydropower stations, which provide 14% of the country's hydropower generation capacity.
The Clutha River drains the high mountains of the Southern Alps in the west and passes through a complex topographic system of basins and ranges towards the east before reaching into the Pacific Ocean. A majority of the topographical features of the Clutha River catchment area are a direct result of the late Cenozoic and active tectonic processes that are occurring in southern South Island due to deformation along the nearby plate boundary, defined by the Alpine Fault.
The river is known for its scenery, gold-rush history, and swift turquoise waters. A river conservation group, the Clutha Mata-Au River Parkway Group, is working to establish a regional river parkway, with a trail, along the entire river corridor.
Toponomy
The Māori name for the Clutha River is the Mata-Au, meaning 'surface current'. Early settlers sometimes spelled the Māori name as "Matou" and "Matua-a", and pronounced it "Mattoo". Māori also referred to the Clutha River as Maranuku. The name Matau is widely used to refer to one of the two distributaries of the Clutha close to its mouth.The first appearance of a European name for the Clutha River / Mata-Au was the Molyneux River ; its mouth was named by Captain James Cook after his sailing master, Robert Molineux. The name is also applied to the small settlement of Port Molyneux. Early maps show Moulineux Harbour in its original spelling, but later maps indicate the harbour's name was written as "Molyneux", rather than "Moulineux".
The river is now commonly known as the Clutha, which comes from Cluaidh, the Scots Gaelic name for the River Clyde in Scotland, which runs through Glasgow.
The official name for the river has been Clutha River / Mata-au since the Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act 1998, a landmark Treaty of Waitangi settlement, which added dual names to approximately 90 geographic features throughout the South Island to recognise the "equal and special significance" of both the English and Māori names.
History
Māori history
Māori occupation of the Otago Region began in. Māori learned to hunt the numerous species of moa and burned many of the inland forests. The first iwi in Otago were Waitaha, then Kāti Māmoe; later came Kāi Tahu. By the end of the fourteenth century, the environment in Otago and Southland had begun to shift, with podocarp woods retreating and the moa population declining. A few Māori settlements in the region started to lose importance, although several settlements still existed in Central Otago. Several locations along the Clutha River retain the names of Kāti Māmoe chiefs, such as, Taumata-o-Te-Hau, a hill on the north side of the Clutha River, above Balclutha, named after the chief who climbed there and watched for the arrival of a taua for whom he had prepared a trap. Historically, Kāi Tahu travelled upstream the Clutha River to fish for eels and hunt waterfowl. Kāi Tahu used to travel in to the interior of the South Island almost every year and had campsites and burial sites along the Clutha River and its nearby lakes.The mouth of Mata-au was heavily populated, with many permanent and temporary Kāi Tahu settlements throughout the lower stretches of the river. Murikauhaka, a settlement near the mouth of the Mata-au, was at one stage home to an estimated two hundred people. Māori trading groups used the Cromwell Gorge as the main thoroughfare to their pounamu and moa-hunting expeditions to the interior of Otago.
Many early Māori archaeological sites have been found in the Cromwell Gorge, featuring moa eggshell fragments. Unlike other Central Otago sites, no burned bones have been found.
European history
During early European settlement in the South Island, a whaling station was established close to the Clutha River's mouth at Port Molyneux, and during this period the sea was the source of almost all of the area's economy. The town of Port Molyneux, located on this bay, was a busy harbour during the 19th century. Its location at the mouth of the Clutha made it a good site for trade, both from the interior and for coastal and ocean-going shipping. A major flood in 1878 shifted the mouth of the Clutha to the north and silted up the port, after which the town gradually dwindled.The first European to visit the Upper Clutha area and to see the inland lakes of Wakatipu, Wānaka and Hāwea was Nathanael Chalmers, who was guided by Chiefs Reko and Kaikōura in 1853. They returned him down the river on a mōkihi, a flax reed open kayak, that they built from flax stems and raupō from the shores of Lake Hāwea.
In 1910, 57 years after the event, Nathanael Chalmers remembered his boat trip through the Cromwell Gorge: "I shall never forget the "race" through the gorge... my heart was literally in my mouth, but those two old men seemed to care nothing for the current."
European "sheepmen" arrived later in the late 1850s, searching for grazing grounds in Otago's interior. Alexander and Watson Shennan set off from Milton in December 1857 to Central Otago, looking for land to raise sheep. The brothers proceeded farther than the runholders who had previously acquired territory up to the Waitāhuna River. When they returned to Dunedin after spending several days exploring the Manuherikia Valley, they submitted an application to the Otago Provincial Government to lease two blocks of land on either side of the Manuherikia River. The total land area was. They brought sheep to the district in 1858. Watson Shennan described the area as "well grassed and watered, a very land of promise" which attracted others to the region.
In 1862, gold-rich bars of rocks and gravel were discovered by Christopher Reilly and Horatio Hartley during their winter 1862 expedition up Cromwell Gorge through the waters of the Clutha. They arrived in Dunedin on 15 August, 1862, deposited their of gold, and were rewarded with £2,000.
Gold rush
A gold rush began in Central Otago in the 1860s. With several settlements quickly established along gold-rich rivers such as the Clutha and Kawarau, the rush to Central Otago was the largest in the region's history. A large number of miners' huts also existed during this era along the Clutha River. Roxburgh Gorge had a majority of the huts of this type, but they also occurred in Cromwell Gorge. A 1980 archaeological survey in the Roxburgh Gorge indicated a number of 32 huts and 79 rock shelters present in the area.Around 100 dredges have operated at various times during the area's history in the river bed and nearby gravels, including the present-day gorge to the east of the Old Man Range. The Clutha River and its tributary Kawarau transported alluvial gold across a distance of in river bed load. A Middle Pleistocene-age ancestral Clutha River delivered detrital gold across the lower parts of what is presently the Manuherikia Valley near Alexandra.
By Christmas 1861, 14,000 prospectors were on the Tuapeka and Waipori fields. The gold rush was short-lived, with most of the alluvial gold played out by 1863, but prospectors continued to arrive, swelling to a maximum of 18,000 miners in February 1864.
Mining in the Clutha River upstream from Cromwell became significant after 1900, when the area's potential was gradually recognised. Previously, the Kawarau River and the Clutha River running downstream from Cromwell were the primary focus. Māori were aware of gold in the Clutha River but they did not value it.