Lyrics:

Shotover River, your gold it's waning;
And it's years since the colour I've seen.
But it's no use just sitting and Lady Luck blaming.
I'll pack up, then I'll make the break clean.

Chorus (after each verse):

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

It's nearly two years since I left my old mother
For adventure and gold by the pound,
And with Jimmy the prospector he was another
And to the hills of Atago we were bound.

Well we worked the Cardrona's dry valley all over,
Old Jimmy Williams and me.
They were panning good dirt on the winding Shotover,
And so we headed down there just to see.

Well, we sluiced and we cradled for day after day
And making hardly enough to get by.
And then a terrible flood swept poor Jimmy away
During six stormy days in July.