Shotover River, your gold it is waning
It's years since the colour I've seen
No use just waiting and Lady Luck blaming
I'll pack up and make the break clean

Farewell to the gold that never I found
Goodbye to the nuggets that somewhere abound
For it's only when dreaming that I see them gleaming
Down in the dark, deep underground

Now it's nearly two years since I left my old mother
For adventure and gold by the pound
With Jimmy the prospector—he and another
To the hills of Otago we were bound

Farewell to the gold that never I found
Goodbye to the nuggets that somewhere abound
For it's only when dreaming that I see them gleaming
Down in the dark, deep underground

We searched the Cardrona's dry valley all over
Old Jimmy Williams and me
They were panning good dirt on the winding Shotover
So we headed down there just to and see

Farewell to the gold that never I found
Goodbye to the nuggets that somewhere abound
For it's only when dreaming that I see them gleaming
Down in the dark, deep underground

Oh, we sluiced and we cradled for day after day
Making hardly enough to get by
When a terrible flood swept poor Jimmy away
During six stormy days in July

Farewell to the gold that never I found
Goodbye to the nuggets that somewhere abound
For it's only when dreaming that I see them gleaming
Down in the dark, deep underground

Farewell to the gold that never I found
Goodbye to the nuggets that somewhere abound
For it's only when dreaming that I see them gleaming
Down in the dark, deep underground