headed to the lake, where they found a ferry boat waiting to take them across the lake at 15 shillings a head, and a well-stocked store on the other side. When no gold was to be found, an angry mob looted and demolished the store and headed back to Greymouth. Flooding in the swamp at the Arnold River outlet marooned 200 of them, who clung to kahikatea trunks without food until the waters receded. Railway construction By 1867 the Canterbury provincial government had built a bush track along the south bank of the Grey and Arnold rivers, and along the south-west shore of the lake to Natural Paddock. The first farmers in the area settled around the Crooked River in 1868–69. In the 1880s a railway linking Greymouth and Christchurch was begun, which opened up the Arnold Valley and Lake Brunner. The route was originally proposed to follow the eastern side of the lake, but Westland MP Richard Seddon, from 1891 Minister of Public Works, insisted that it follow the western shore, closer to his constituency of Kumara. After some wrangling, the railway was laid to the east of the lake, and a road constructed to connect Kumara with the southern lakeshore, from which a steamboat could convey people to a railway station—although this ferry never eventuated. Moana had its own railway station by 1892, and the line continued as far south as Te Kinga, where it hit swampland. Materials were then conveyed by the steam launch Little Tay across the lake and up the Orangipuku River to Inchbonnie, and during 1893 construction continued in both directions up to Rotomanu and down to Jacksons. The link between Stillwater and Ōtira was completed in 1894. The Midland Line connecting Greymouth and Christchurch opened in 1923, after 36 years of construction and the building of the Ōtira Tunnel. The building of the railway created a market for the long-lasting timber of manoao or silver pine (Manoao colensoi), which was used for railway sleepers, telegraph poles, and bridges. All trains stopped at Moana for water, and the settlement quickly grew: by 1906 it had four shops and a billiard room, and in 1907 a grand hall opened, hosting bachelor dances for the timber workers. The road took longer: by 1896 it had reached from the south from Rotomanu to Bell Hill, with a track to Stillwater, and by 1918 it was possible to