Fucking marvellous! Bastard will be trying to buy his ticket to heaven about now I guess. Hate seeing arseholes living in opulence when people are starving and going without.
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I think you are far too late as they have been found. He had a rock shelter bivy up above the 10 hour gorge that had a bit of his stuff in. The stuff from the bivy were put in a museum that Murry Gunn, son of Davey Gunn of the Hollyford ( that is a story in itself) established. Some arsehole burnt the museum down & so all was lost.
The story of Davey Gunn of the Hollyford is in a book called. The Land of Doing Without by Julia Bradshaw.
JW 
Hi jw
Yes I knew about the museum and it’s a shame that stuff was lost. From the small amount of info I heard from my grandfather I would put money on there still being stuff hidden out there. I have been thinking lately about the items I have photos and letters from arawata although they are in the book they really should be in a museum instead of in a box here
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Yes…just like the Frenchman’s Gold 
Arawata Bill was quite secretive in himself. I don’t think he spoke much, if at all about his searching for the Frenchman’s Gold. He touched on the Lost Ruby Mine though.
JW
My grandfather would have known I have found some of hi diary’s trying to read them is another story but have found a few references to his Time with bill
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This is the day the photos were taken of my grandfather and bill in Queenstown I even still have the camera that’s at his feet
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Thats cool. 
Bill took a lot (of info) to his grave. I think he kept the searching for the Frenchman’s Gold side of his adventures to himself.
JW 
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Came across this. Nothing new really but I am surprised I hadn’t come across it before. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJY9M97STPY
JW
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Just out of interest, can anyone show on a map the rough location of the cascades whete this cave may have been?
It’s a big area and not many caves so highly unlikely this was the case unless it was further up into the red hills which is more unlikely to carry anything up there!
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There was/is no cave relating to the Frenchmen’s Gold IMHO. Any cave that might have been is more likely related to the Lost Ruby Mine which was up on a cliff face & apparently reached & worked from crude scaffolding made from timber branches from the bush.
Here is a mark on a map, but that’s not the area where the lost ruby mine was either.
The Lost Ruby Mine
Self-published by Brian Jackson
Brian says he wrote this in a few weeks, and it shows. It’s very much a hand-made book. And maybe that’s exactly as it should be.
Otago’s Lost Ruby Mine story deserves to be one of our great camp-fire yarns. It’s got everything: Great fortunes found and then lost (and maybe found again), high drama, capital crime, the world’s most dramatic scenery, remote, inaccessible valleys … full of history, rich with colourful characters, very much a part of our culture.
This is a story best told as the ripping good yarn that it is. A mixture of myth and reality, adventure and imagination, hard geology and fanciful prospector’s ambitions, the Lost Ruby Mine story doesn’t need high scholarship and endless analysis.
It’s a story that also needs to be written the way it has always been told. In the language of the high country and bush, with the smell and feel that can only be supplied by someone who has been there. Brian Jackson’s telling is immediate and compelling. It’s all over the place, but good yarns often are. Take it for what it is, and you’ll enjoy this book enormously.
So what do we know about the Lost Ruby Mine, and what does Brian’s book add?
Are there rubies in South Westland? Probably not. But I’ve seen and collected gem-quality pink garnets from the Little Red Hills, and those are almost certainly the ‘rubies’ of past discoveries.
Was there ever a mine? If the Walter Murray narrative is credible, there was rudimentary surface mining carried out in the 1890s. All trace will have long since disappeared.
Where was the mine? Almost certainly in the Little Red Hills, north of the Upper Barrier Flat and West of Lake Alabaster in South Westland. Or just maybe, in exactly comparable geology on the south side of the Simonian Pass, along the eastern margin of the ‘big’ Red Hills.
What’s the significance of the Walter Murray story, published in the Otago Witness in February 1987 and reproduced in Brian’s book? It’s clearly written by someone who visited the Red Hills area - the descriptions are too accurate for it to be a complete work of fiction.
But if the parts of the Walter Murray story that we can verify ring true, does that mean it’s all true? If the geology and the geography are right, does that mean that the mineralogy is also right, and did they really find, mine and sell large quantities of rubies? Or were they the much less valuable garnets known to exist in the area? Or is the narrative a boy’s own mixture of truth and fiction?
Until someone finds genuine rubies in South Western New Zealand, the answer to that last question will remain a mystery.
Like all good yarns, enough of the Lost Ruby Mine story is true for the rest to be possible. Good on Brian Jackson for keeping this important story alive.
Malcolm Macpherson Monday, December 24, 2001
Ian Dougherty who wrote the book on Arawata Bill
Also did a book on the Lost Ruby Mine
JW
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As I’ve said before these two came from my grandfather’s collection and were most certainly found with bill or were given to him from bill never did get to the bottom of what they are
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Thanks JW, nothing better than an old gold treasure tale, definitely heard of a frw over the years 
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Quite possibly garnets. Be nice if they were rubies though. The value of those, I would say, is that if they were given to your grand father by Bill then that is a treasure for sure.
There are secrets in those hills. Thanks for sharing.
JW
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Yes most likely! There was some gold with them but I can’t put my hands on it not sure where it has got to! He had a massive collection of rock specimens gold quartz green stone and lots of other random stuff I suspect most came from south Westland
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