Slab Hut Creek Gold Fossicking Area

A true West Coast hidey hole, Slab Hut Creek has an anomaly of a name because there is no slab, and no hut. The creek is a goodie though, because it comes with permission to fossick (sluice or pan by hand) for gold. Sandfly city.

To get here, take the track off the Ikamatua Highway just north of Mawheraiti. Fossicking is permitted for about 2km upstream and downstream from the campsite.

DOC are the managers of the camping ground here which is also open for picnicing. The big social asset here for the campers is a brick built fireplace bbq and pizza oven, often complete with cut firewood, as well as a second fireplace for latecomers.

There are plenty of sturdy picnic tables, and everything except electricity for campers. The beginning of the walkway up the rugged, tanin-stained gold creek, starts out with a boardwalk and signage, then rapidly becomes a standard West Coast track, suffice to say, easier to negotiate in summer. There are a variety of walks, mountainbiking tracks from herein the Victoria Forest Park.'

This is real gold country, many permits of different types still exist and operations come and go and the upper reaches of this creek and it's tributaries have a permit attached to them, owned by a Reefton company. Further upstream still are all the old workings of the Reefton Diggings. At a place called Commissioner's Flat, there is apparently a private miner's hut. Also, downstream, by the highway there is another permit granted, but the fossicking right remains, right to where the creek meets the Little Grey River.

Image Credit: Johanna Persson