Thread: Golden Hills Hut Restoration

Some pics of the hut during its heyday

awesome thread

The book that those photos are from is also an awesome read. 'Ngamatea'. As written in the book " its not a station, its a province!". In its heyday it was 70 miles long and 30 miles wide.

And one of the most beautiful areas of New Zealand.

Just reading one of Lester Masters’ books and it turns out that Golden Hills was built in 1925 by Jack Steel, Jimmie Wethersone, and Barny Knoll, who were commissioned by the then owners of Ngamatea Station to build the hut for their shepherds. Lester actually dedicated a short but interesting chapter to the hut. It turns out that rabbiters were based there for sometime not long after it was built (the rabbits were in plague proportions back then), and the hut was even used for guerilla warfare training during WW2. It also talks about some of the shepherds getting a surprise visit from the two gold prospectors who probably went missing after looking for gold in the Panoko Stream (more commonly called Gold Creek). The prospectors weren’t experienced bushmen and it was assumed that they went missing in the bush, but it was also possible that they made it out. I guess we’ll never know!

Thanks 7.62 , Lester Masters wrote a introduction into the Golden Hills Hut Visitors Book and included what you wrote about in your post , it started with a poem

Golden Hills Hut

We "ll take the old route o"er the range
By windy ridge and spur ,
And come again to Golden Hills ,
And golden days that were .

While restoring one of the 2 Hut windows i noticed names and date written on the inside of the sash , the names where the original hut builders you have mentioned and have been left intact .

Over the past 4 years while undertaking the Restoration i have met and talked to numerous men that once worked as Musterers on Ngamatea Station , i met Dave Withers who first went to Ngamatea as a 18 year old and his first Muster was the 1959 - 1960 season , Dave recalls he was given a Braun camera by his grandmother and carried it with him every day and has a wonderfull photograph record of his 6 years at Ngamatea , Dave is currently in the process of publishing a book of his time at Ngamatea .

The photo collections of Don Hammond and Ray Birdsall are outstanding as are the many stories and folk lore that surround Ngamatea .

If i may i will tell a story as told to me by Tim Birdsall , Rays son

Ray and 2 Musterers where Mustering when they where caught out in blizard conditions , due to snow building up on there horses hooves making it to dangerous to continue on horse back , being 5 hours from Golden Hills Hut where they knew was shelter , food and dry firewood the decision was made to abandon there horses and continue on foot in appalling conditions , they knew darkness would overcome them before they reached Golden Hills , there long oil skin coats and south wester hats kept them dry as possible , the thoughts of hot food and drying out in front of the open fire .

On reaching Golden Hills Hut well after dark they where shocked to find there food supply had been eaten and all the dry fire wood burnt , with no blankets and unable to start a fire it was a long cold night , the following morning they walked the 6 hours back to the Station , a few days later the Musterers where back at Golden Hills , they made 2 large earth mounds , placed a cross on each with the words " Here lies the barstards that ate our food and burnt our fire wood "

The crosses lasted many years and the mounds are still visible today

Awesome thread to read through. That place and Ngamatea is on the bucket list to visit. I am also really wanting to read that book as 2 of my uncles worked there in the 1960's and are mentioned in the book from what I've been told.

@Murray N that’s really cool to find the names on the window sash. The only person I’ve met from that era is Peter van Dongen who was a packman/cook. I dealt with Peter a bit but that was 15 odd years ago and I had barely heard of Ngamatea back then. If I bumped into Peter tomorrow I would certainly be keen to hear about his experiences from back in those days. I’m also keen to get a copy of Dave Withers book when it gets published, thanks for the heads up.

That’s quite a story about Ray Birdsall. The guy that cleaned out the hut of food and firewood was clearly a thoughtless wanker and put some lives at risk.

Years ago my daughter gave me a copy of "Ngamatea: The Land And The People".
It's a great read. Covers back to the Fernie brothers era.

Just found this post and would like to add my thanks and express my admiration of the work that was done. In a time when NZ history is being made compulsory in schools I hope that the stories attached to places like this don't get lost in all the politically correct bull being pushed by those in favour of the "cancel culture".