What a jam packed morning we have just had! Year 7 and 8 Abbotsford kids came all the way from Dunedin to visit our Museum and go skiing.

We had 59 students in total, so everyone split up into 3 smaller groups, and rotated through our activities which were a Museum visit, a Historic Walk, and of course GOLD PANNING! It was a lucky school group with most kids finding specks of gold when they went panning in the Arrow river. I wonder if the recent rainfall helped make the panning so successful? Gold was first discovered in the Arrow river by Jack Tewa in 1862, when he was digging along the bank of the river.

I posted up some pictures of some gold that a student found in her pan ... It's just a tiny wee speck. The miners had to look very carefully and be very patient when they were gold mining.It would take them all day to collect up small specks like that.

Comment below if you think being a gold miner in the 1800's would have been easy or hard - and say why!

Enjoy the rest of your visit Abbotsford kids!