G D e D
Shotover River, your gold it is waning
C D G D
It's weeks since your colors I've seen.
G D e D
But it’s no use just sitting and Lady Luck blaming
C D G C G
I'll pack up and make a break clean.
Chorus:
D a G D
Farewell to the gold that never I found,
D a G D
Goodbye to the nuggets that somewhere abound;
G D e D
For it's only when dreaming that I see them gleaming
C D G
Down in the dark deep underground.
Well, 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 was bound.
Chorus
We worked the Cardrona's dry valleys all over
Old Jimmy Williams and me.
They were panning good dust on the winding shotover
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.