Farewell to the Gold

Shotover River, your gold it is waning;
It’s weeks since the colour I’ve seen.
But it’s no use just sitting and Lady Luck blaming,
So I’ll pack up and make the break clean.

Chorus(repeated after each verse):
Farewell to the gold that never I found,
Goodbye to the nuggets that somewhere abound;
For it’s only when dreaming that I see you gleaming
Down in the dark, deep underground

Well, it’s nearly two years since I left my old mother
For adventure and gold by the pound,
With Jimmy the prospector—he was another
For the hills of Otago was bound.

We worked the Cardrona’s dry valley all over,
Old Jimmy Williams and me.
But they were panning good dirt on the winding Shotover
So we headed down there just to see.

We sluiced and we cradled for day after day,
Making hardly enough to get by;
Until a terrible flood swept poor Jimmy away
During six stormy days in July.

(repeat first verse)

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