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.
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Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference:
E-299-003
Pencil and watercolour sketch by Charles Heaphy
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.
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