Story: Hauraki–Coromandel region

Surveyor and artist Charles Heaphy, who served as a gold commissioner at Coromandel from November 1852 to June 1853, drew this cartoon of officers from the survey ship Pandora having a picnic and panning day on the field. The lone figure on a mountain at the top of the drawing is ‘ye gold commissioner’, Heaphy himself, who ‘speculateth on ye amount of ye licence fees’. Collecting fees was a principal task of a gold commissioner.