Macraes Town Centre & Gold Trail

Macraes area was settled in the 1850s by farmers and later by miners following the discovery of gold in the 1860s. 

The area still has a working gold mine; the largest in New Zealand turning our over 50% of New Zealand’s gold production each year.

In the area, you can find reminders of Otago’s gold-rush past at Golden Point Historic Reserve, which houses an original, and still working, stamper battery and mud-brick miners’ houses.

Take the time to visit Macraes town centre and find incredible schist stone buildings that have been standing since the gold-rush, not far from the town centre, stop by Tan’s House. A colonial era Chinese merchants’ mud-brick house that shows what it would have been like to live there in the 1800’s.