Whitney Thurlow revisits a notorious avalanche.
In Avalanche Accidents in Aotearoa, the only scholarly history of avalanches in New Zealand, one event stands out.
It was August of 1963, and 50 prospectors were camped at the head of the Serpentine Gully, near Dunstan, when a “very heavy snowfall” hit the Main Divide of the Southern Alps. Set up at the foot of a large cliff, and the tents were pitched close to each other for safety. Then, on the morning of August 14, an avalanche swept down from above and engulfed them all. Nine miners were able to escape. The rest were buried under 16 metres of debris.
As well as featuring in Avalanche Accidents in Aotearoa, the Serpentine avalanche is described in historian Eugene Grayland’s book New Zealand Disasters alongside incidents like the Tangiwai rail accident, which killed 151 people in 1953. It has also been covered by multiple magazines. In turn, these articles and books have been cited in research all over the world.
Being such a big event casualty-wise, it sharply skews the statistics detailed in Avalanche Accidents in Aotearoa, which counts the decade of 1860 to 1869 as the deadliest for recorded avalanche deaths, with 41. The next highest number is in 1980 to 1989, with 23. As for New Zealand avalanche fatalities by activity, the Serpentine event bumps mining, at 32%, into second place, after alpine climbing (35%), and puts it far above heli-skiing (1%) and tramping (5%).
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The closest town to Deep Creek today would be Alexandra, but the truth is, it’s not near anywhere. It had snowed just about every day that August, and the trail over the mountains from Clarks Junction was really just a line through deep snow and mud, drawn on the barren landscape. Much of the time, even horses couldn’t get through. It was a tough place for tough people, but even a hardened policeman would have been shocked when John Tippings and eight other men staggered into Deep Creek, two of them close to death.
Everything we know about what had happened that day is from the detailed report sub-inspector Gilbert Percy sent to police headquarters in Dunedin. Tippings, his mates, and about 40 other prospectors had been working the Serpentine diggings, which were 14 kilometres from, and at a much higher altitude than, Deep Creek. They had been sitting out a particularly bad storm in their tents at the bottom of a deep gully, and reported that “an immense snowdrift that had formed at the top of the cliff fell on the tents, completely covering all of them”. Since Tipping’s group had been located further from the cliff than the others, they were able to dig themselves out.
According to Percy’s report “after several vain attempts to rescue the unfortunate inmates of the other tents who, they state, are covered by some 40 to 50 feet of snow, they were obliged to desist”. Percy dispatched a constable to the site of the accident to report back immediately “upon finding any bodies”.
Meanwhile, the story went public and hit the papers under sensational headlines: ‘Terrible Catastrophe, Reported loss of 40 lives by an avalanche.’
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In August 1862, almost exactly one year before the Serpentine avalanche, two miners by the names of Horatio Hartley and Christopher Reilly had appeared before the Chief Gold Receiver in Dunedin and astonished the world with a deposit of 1000 ounces. They also claimed a £2000 reward from the Provincial Council offered by divulging the location of the find: not far from the confluence of the Clutha and Kawarau Rivers, near the site of present-day Cromwell. This triggered a stampede of hopeful miners headed for the Dunstan goldfield. It also started, for many, a terrible sequence of unintended consequences.
According to the Otago Witness, “whatever the distance and however perilous the journey, before that week had ended, half the town had made up its mind to head for the Dunstan [present-day Clyde]”. Even the hospital in Dunedin reported that “the gold mania is greatly conducing to the recovery of many of the patients.”
To get to the Clyde from Dunedin, the usual route swung to the north, avoiding any serious river crossings or mountain ranges. But a more direct route, called the Dunstan Trail, could save several days. The problem was the trail crossed four mountain ranges: the Lammermoors, the Rock and Pillars, Rough Ridge and the Raggedy Ranges. It was 176 kilometres of exposed travel, with very few places to shelter. Still, within a matter of weeks, thousands of would-be prospectors were streaming along the Dunstan Trail. Lack of experience, shelter or provisions meant nothing; many had just arrived in New Zealand, and had no idea what an Otago winter was like.
The highest and most exposed point on the trail at the summit of the Rough Ridge mountains, which catch the full fury of any storms sweeping across that part of Te Waipounamu / the South Island. With no trees and no sharp land features, the rolling terrain accelerates the wind. It was very near this desolate spot that 50 miners staked their claim in June of 1863. They called it Serpentine Creek, for the twisting creek that ran through the diggings, and it would become the site of New Zealand’s largest avalanche accident. Or would it?
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In June, 1863 the steamship SS Edina began ferrying passengers from Melbourne to Dunedin to service the gold rush. It would return to Melbourne loaded with gold, and the latest news. The Otago Daily Times printed a news summary for Australian readers that was dispatched on the Edina, and on August 25, 1863, an article entitled ‘SUMMARY FOR MELBOURNE’ appeared. More than 1000 words into it was this obscure paragraph:
“We mentioned also that an official report … of the loss of forty lives by the falling of an avalanche of snow at Separation Creek. We are happy to say that that rumor has been found to be without adequate foundation…. A police constable preceded to Separation Creek… for the purpose of investigating the report, that on the night of the 14th several lives had been there lost in a snowstorm. The constable, in company with four other men, arrived at the place at noon on Monday, the 17th instant, and found that there had not been any lives lost, but that the miners there, numbering fifty, were suffering severely from the want of provisions… The tents, numbering about twelve, had been erected against a high bank, the snowdrift covering them to a depth of from six to eight feet. Three men were frostbitten, and two have been sent to the Dunedin Hospital.” It wasn’t even important enough to get the name Serpentine Creek right.
The obscure SS Edina report suggests that while many newspapers of the time were happy to publish the sensational news of 40 deaths, when it turned out to be false, the correction received little fanfare. And it turns out there was never a government inquest into the accident, this at a time when inquests into flooding and exposure deaths were common. Clearly 40 people had not perished under “40 to 50 feet of snow”.
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Did Percy make the story up? Unlikely. The gold frenzy had put pressure on law and order, and Rough Ridge was one of several newly created police districts. Percy’s report is written to Police Commissioner St. John Branigan. Branigan and his force, known as “Branigan’s Troopers”, were famous for their success in keeping the peace throughout the Otago goldfields. Percy was a rising talent under Branigan, having had received two promotions in the previous five months. His report on the avalanche stands out for its attention to detail. He duly names of all nine of the “survivors” who arrived at Deep Creek, which supports the conclusion that Percy relayed what he was told accurately.
This leaves us with the information that Percy received from John Tippings. If Tippings made up the story, or exaggerated, why? If he was desperate to get help for the others, it would have been counterproductive to say they were dead. But if Tipping’s story of 40 to 50 feet of snow was true, there is no way the victims could have dug themselves out. Why did Tippings and his party lead Gilbert Percy to believe that everyone had been killed?
No further information exists about John Tippings, but we can speculate. March of 1863 saw a record 14,168 immigrants land in Dunedin, almost all by ship, in the wake of the news of gold at Dunstan. Four fifths of these arrivals were from Australia. Gold was only discovered at the Serpentine in June, so it is likely this new strike was populated by newcomers. Tippings and his companions had almost certainly been at Serpentine less than two months, and would have never experienced a New Zealand winter. Maybe they had no idea what an avalanche actually was. They had probably never seen snow.
The winter of 1863 had been appalling. A sustained snowfall in July, followed by a sudden melt, had caused Queenstown’s Shotover River to rise by more than 10 metres overnight. A miner at the Campbells Creek diggings estimated that the snow was a “fearful” six metres deep in places. The conditions at Serpentine on August 14 would have been severe. Perhaps the tents had been buried by the incessant snowfall, and not by an avalanche, and the survivors were able to shovel themselves out after Tippings had fled. We will never know for sure, but it is clear that Tippings and his mates were undernourished, hypothermic and desperate. They could easily have panicked. We shouldn’t be too hard on them.
Otago miners did perish almost daily in August of 1863. Deaths that were confirmed include at least 40 fatalities from drownings, burials, landslides and exposure. Two days before the Serpentine accident, a man froze trying to get to Deep Creek. At the Tomahawk diggings, a miner suffocated in his snow-covered tent. Twelve men were killed in Skippers Canyon when a landslide buried their huts as they slept. John Dounoughoe, aged 32, died on the summit of the Crown Range.
Those that did survive suffered terribly. On August 17, the same day the rescue party reached the Serpentine, another drama was unfolding nearby. The Otago Daily Times described “a gully between the deep stream and Drunken Woman’s [near present day Manorburn Dam]”, where eighteen people, including women and children, had become trapped by deep snow. “The unfortunate people are beyond all human help, the depth of snow being so great that attempts to reach the place of their captivity will be fruitless … such doleful tales of misery and human suffering had, perhaps, never been made known amongst the inhabitants of a mining community before.”
The lesson of the Serpentine report, then, is maybe not that it was incorrect. Instead, it might be that the persistence of Gilbert Percy’s tale of the ‘Terrible Catastrophe’ reminds us that the facts of a story may be wrong, but it can still tell a truth.
WHITNEY THURLOW
