Nokomai River
The Nokomai River is a river in New Zealand, officially named on 1 January 1931. It rises on Mount Tennyson and flows south-westerly into the Mataura River. The valley was known for its gold rushes. In 1901, 113 people lived in the valley. By 1956, the population was down to 17.
A small part of Nokomai patterned mire is in the Nokomai catchment. It is part of a relatively unmodified wetland on several square kilometres of the southern Garvie Mountains. It is possibly the largest such area in Australasia and is dominated by grasses, sedges and mosses, with shallow pools, small islands and clumps of low vegetation. The mire drains north via Roaring Lion Creek to the Nevis River, and south via Dome Burn to the Waikaia River. Cardamine bilobata, Neomyrtus pedunculata and Veronica rigidula are Nationally Critical species growing in the area.
Geology
The mountains around the valley are mostly undifferentiated volcaniclastic sandstone and siltstone of the Caples terrane, dating from Permian-Triassic times, around 250 years ago. The valley is aligned with the Nevis-Cardrona Fault System, which has resulted in pumpellyite-actinolite, schist-like facies. The rock has been eroded to produce a Quaternary alluvium in the valley, which increases to a depth of in the lower valley. It is likely some gold came from local hydrothermal sources and some was placed in the valley by the Wakatipu glacier, during its Quaternary advances.History
The Nokomai valley was part of the land acquired by the Crown under the 1848 Kemp’s Deed and 1853 Murihiku purchases. The 1998 Ngāi Tahu Settlement redressed some of the injustices.Donald Angus Cameron left Scotland in 1854, worked at Penola, sailed from Melbourne to Dunedin in 1859, took his sheep to the Nokomai valley that and the following year and named it after Glenfalloch, near his Inverness birthplace. Glenfalloch station was sold to Frank Hall, or Hore in 1950, with whose family it remains, as a sheep and beef station of, on a high country pastoral lease, which extends into the Nevis valley to the north.
Gold
Victoria Gully, an eastern tributary of Nokomai, had its first gold rush when 6 Victorian miners, including James Lamb, discovered alluvial gold in 1862 and named it after their place of origin. It was one of the smaller gold fields, producing in 1862, though a government report in 1865 said it had more than justified expectations. Charles Sew Hoy and his family mined the valley from January 1894. Sew Hoy built two aqueducts to the valley. The race from Roaring Lion Creek in the Garvie mountains, to the north, took 3 years to cut. Since 2014, it has had Roaring Lion walking and mountain-biking track alongside it from Garston, which includes Mud Hut and Slate Hut. In 1932 The Nokomai Gold Mining Coy Ltd was floated, with capital of over £60,000 and a 150 ton, -high, dragline excavator was assembled. It was found unsuitable and was last used on 12 April 1934. The mine closed in February 1943. The dredge was sold for use in the Avon River / Ōtākaro and its generator for the Fraser River, both in 1948. Gold was mined again from 1991.Cinnabar, almandine, magnetite, spessartine, and grossular garnets also occur in the valley.