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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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