Henry's Songbook

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's waning
It's years since the colour I've seen
But it's no use just sitting and Lady Luck blaming
I'll pack up and I'll make the break clean

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
To the hills of Otago we were 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 on down there just to see

We sluiced and we cradled for day after day
Making hardly enough to get by
Then a terribly flood swept poor Jimmy away
During six stormy days in July