The Dark Portal Opens

Richard Hill – the is-land’s first documented mass killer – arrived in Dunedin in 1862. He’d taken the surname Burgess, from a runholder he’d ripped off back in Victoria. According to his memoir, as edited by David Burton, he came for just one reason:
“to see what I could do on the diggings” He had spent 11 out of his 14 years in Victoria in prison, the last five in a floating prison hulk on Hobson Bay largely in solitary confinement and below deck. “For four and a half years I never saw the sun rise or set”. This sort of hell might have scared a man straight, but not Hill.

At the Weatherstones (one valley over from Gabriel’s Gully, near Lawrence) Hill and buddy, Thomas Noon, specialised in holding up lone miners and divesting them of gold and goods, leading to a 3 year spell in Dunedin Gaol (not the red brick one there currently but an intermediary location after the lone gaoler accidentally set the original on fire) after a wild-westesque shootout with constabulary.

After a thwarted escape attempt, Hill and Noon were released at the Waitaki River – the border between Canterbury and Otago – and set off for the West Coast; making their way up the Rakaia Gorge and down the Arahura River, both nearly losing their lives to a series of watery mishaps. There Noon (now calling himself Kelly) and Hill (Burgess) hooked up with William Levy (gold buyer and fence), and Joseph Sullivan (publican and transportee), and robberies became killings without compunction. Burgess reserves for Sullivan his most extreme invective, describing him as worse than the worst dross and scum of society, of having out-judassed Judas, and accusing him of being a lone operative in the killing of surveyor George Dobson. In his protests are howls of innocence, and it seems a genuinely held outrage on his part, even as much as his memoir is a calculated plea for mercy.

He’d become quite the fan of bank robberies, but couldn’t carry them out because banks and bakers were well protected. Instead, the gang of four decided to revert to that old successful tactic – robbing gold miners in an isolated spot. This time there’d be no prison stint as there’d be no survivors to dob them in. There’s no doubt Sullivan played a leading part in the finding of four gold-carrying dupes who would be traipsing the Maungatapu track from Canvastown to Nelson, that he lay in wait, and that he helped with the murders – even if he didn’t play the leading part Burgess claimed. Burgess wanted history to know he was the better man.
David Burton has this exchange taking place between Burgess and Sullivan on the Maungatapu Road:

“The day was now advancing when he left his covert, and came to me and told me there was a young man and a fellow carrying a swag, and he should put them up. I said, “No, let them pass.” He observed, “I shall.”
And had he carried out his intention, I should have shot him like a dog. For when he persisted, I raised my gun; then Anne Fulton (for it was she) came into sight…”

The account of the main killings- those at Maungatapu - is documented here

Few of the places involved in the story are readily accessible today. It’s still theoretically possible to tramp up the Rakaia Gorge and over the hill – hunters must do it – but it’s quite a hard task. There’s a four hour (return) walk from the Rakaia Bridge that’s described as ‘easy’ by trampers.
Weatherstones – now called Wetherstone – is along from Gabriel’s Gully, right turn from Lawrence – there’s a golf course there. And probably a fair few undiscovered dead gold miners…
Maungatapu was displaced by a main highway through the Rai Valley, and for many years remained a popular four wheel drive track that came out at Nelson’s Maitai Valley. A four wheel drive club put up a plaque on ‘murderers rock’ behind which the gang of four hid. Nowadays, we understand, the track’s been blocked off completely.


If you want to enter the South Island through its dark portal, you might want to carry a gun in self-defence – just in case.