Shotover River, your gold it's waning
And it's years since the color I've seen.
No use just sitting, Lady Luck blaming
I'll pack up and make a 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 three years since I left my old mother
For adventure and gold by the pound.
With Jimmy the prospector, he was another,
For the hills of Otago we were bound.
Chorus
We worked the Cardrona's dry valley all over
Old Jimmy Williams and me.
They were panning good dust on the winding shotover
So we headed down there just to see.
Chorus
We sluiced and we cradled for day after day
Making hardly enough to get by;
Then a terrible flood swept poor Jimmy away
During six stormy days in July.
