My+favourite+place

=**Places of the heart** **Wanaka** =



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and most of the time some of our cousins go there as well with us. I have lots of great memeries from going up there =====

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for christmas and new years and all the other hoildays. When I am up in Wanaka most days we go boating or go to town =====

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Wanaka is my favourite place because when we go up there you can just relax and you have lots of fun boating all day. =====

//__**Here is the audio recording of my poe****m**__//. media type="file" key="Megs poem.mov" width="144" height="144"

__**Here is a map of my favourite place Wanaka.**__

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//**__ Gold mining history __**//
====**Criffel stations high country is home to a little known piece of Otago gold mining history. Men became rich up there. But they had to hide the location to get rich and just how rich is a bit of a mystery**====

The Criffel Range was farmed under the crown licenses from the 1860s. Musterers were employed by early sheep or cattle farmers. They enjoyed the beautiful views with not seeing many people all day or all night. While other parts of Otago where full with people in search of their gold. Water is easy to find in a valley. But it’s hard to come by on top of a high dry Otago mountain range. Everything is frozen up there for up to six months. The winter’s snow provides some water. In the early years of the diggings, the snow that melted damned in the spring and used as a source of water to wash out the gold. Not enough to last the mining season. In 1883 John Halliday and this two friends found what they had been looking for since arriving in New Zealand from Scotland 15 years earlier. Gold! It wasn"t officially notified until 1885, the Criffel Diggings were to produce thousands of ounces of gold but there had to be a big amount of of planning to get all the gold out. The Criffel diggings were in the hands of the odd musterer and his dog team by the turn of the twentieth century. Today when people go to visit Criffel station it reveals holes in the earth, piles of stones and the remans of hand dug water races.

**Natural attraction** //Wanaka//

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Mount iron is one of the big mountains in wanaka. there are walking-track leads through tussock and manuka shrubland to the flat-topped summit and drops over the steep southern edge horse-treks are also available in the area. To walk over the mountain it takes about just over 3hours to walk up one side and down the other side. Mount iron is just on the outside of Wanaka and takes about 10 to 15 minutes walk. ======