Appos Creek
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Appos Creek | |
|---|---|
 Appos Creek as seen from Devil's Boots Road | |
 Route of Appos Creek | |
| Location | |
| Country | New Zealand |
| Physical characteristics | |
| Source | |
| • location | Appos Flat |
| • coordinates | 40°43′41″S 172°39′51″E / 40.7281°S 172.6643°E |
| • elevation | 120 m |
| Mouth | |
• location | Aorere River |
• coordinates | 40°44′15″S 172°37′54″E / 40.7374°S 172.6318°E |
• elevation | 19 m |
| Basin features | |
| Progression | Appos Creek → Aorere River → Golden Bay / Mohua → Tasman Sea |
| Bridges | Devil's Boots Road |
Appos Creek is a small waterway in the hills behind the Golden Bay / Mohua township of Parapara in New Zealand. The creek is notable as the site of the first gold discovery—in 1856—in the South Island, and this started the Golden Bay gold rush. This gold rush, which lasted for three years, triggered a name change of the area, from Massacre Bay to Golden Bay.
Appos Creek is a waterway in the hills behind Parapara.[1][2] The creek begins at Appos Flat.[3] Appos Creek discharges into the Aorere River.[2]
There is legal access—mostly via paper roads—from Plain Road: a corridor accesses Appos Flat, then descends along Appos Creek to its confluence with the creek coming out of Lightband Gully, with the paper road then following up the gully and beyond it along an unnamed tributary.[4]
Naming
According to Place Names of New Zealand, the creek was named after Appo Hocton from Nelson,[5] but Hocton's entry published in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography is silent on him having ever been involved in gold mining.[6] Local writer Enga Washbourn published a family history in 1970 titled Courage and Camp Ovens, with her great-grandfather William Washbourn intimately involved in the resulting gold rush. In the book, she talks of Appoo's Creek and Appoo's Flat being named after a "Cingalese[a] digger whose name appears on a passenger list in February 1857".[7] The passenger list she refers to was published in The Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle on 25 February 1857, reporting that Appoo was returning from Massacre Bay.[b][9] Jacobus Appoo was a hairdresser in Nelson.[10] Nelson geologist and historian Mike Johnston, in his scholarly work on the gold rush titled Aorere Gold, concurs with Washbourn that Jacobus Appoo is the person after whom the creek and flat are named.[11]
