The Hore Alchemists

The Cornish tinners who answered the siren call of the Otago gold rush achieved the alchemist's dream, converting the base metal they worked at home to gold on the Maniototo Plain.

The precious metal they clawed from the Otago soil set them up, but it was the boundless opportunities their new land offered that gave them and their descendants lasting rewards.

It took courage, tenacity and sacrifice to grasp those opportunities, a price the offspring of two large Cornish mining families were willing to pay. Their enduring New Zealand legacies were shaped on the land, in big business, on the sporting stage and on the bloody battlefields of Europe.