Alexandra and Immediate Districts

Historic Sites Walking Tour 1

A historical tour of old goldmining sites and places of interest from the golden days of the Lower Dunstan.

Alexandra is situated at the head of Lake Roxburgh where it meets the Manuherikia and Clutha rivers. The town began as a gold-mining camp called the Lower Dunstan in 1862 and was named Alexandra after Princess Alexandra of Denmark, who married the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) in 1863. After some spectacular gold strikes in the neighbourhood in the early days, the town received a further boost from the dredging boom of the 1990s.

This tour, which starts from the Alexandra Museum in Walton Street, could take a whole day, even without the excursion to the Lake Roxburgh Walkway and the Roxburgh Gorge Diggings.

Attractions include the picturesquely named ‘Linger and Die’, site of prolonged dredging operations at the turn of the century; the 1906 Manuherikia Road-Rail Bridge and the earlier 1879 Shaky Bridge, now rebuilt as a footbridge; the recently restored sun-dried mud-brick Vallance Cottage, built at the turn of the century by one of the early settlers; and the store of the 1870 Manuherikia Brewery, now part of a holiday camp.

This tour brochure is published by the Otago Goldfields Heritage Trust. Further information is available from the Central Otago Visitor Information Office, 22 Centennial Avenue. The local Department of Conservation Office is at 45 Centennial Avenue.

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