Farewell To The Gold by Nic Jones Lyrics

Shotover River, your gold it's waning;
And it's years since the colour I've seen
But it's no use just sitting and Lady Luck blaming
I'll pack up, then I'll make the break clean

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

It's nearly two years since I left my old mother
For adventure and gold by the pound
And with Jimmy the prospector - he was another
And to the hills of Atago we were bound

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

Well we worked the Cardrona's dry valley all over
Old Jimmy Williams and me
They were panning good dirt on the winding Shotover
And so we headed down there just to see
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

Well, we sluiced and we cradled for day after day
And making hardly enough to get by
And then a terrible flood swept poor Jimmy away
During six stormy days in July

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