Michael has been singing this for a few months now and I’ve received requests for the lyrics.  It is a Paul Metsers which he wrote in 1969 in New Zealand, recording it in 1978.

Shotover River, your gold it is waning
It’s weeks since the color I’ve seen.
But it’s no use just sitting and Lady Luck blaming
I’ll pack up and make the break clean.

chorus:
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.
With Jimmy the prospector, he was another,
For the hills of Otago was 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
So we drifted down there just to see.

We sluiced and we cradled for day after day
Barely making enough to get by;
‘Til a terrible flood swept poor Jimmy away
During six stormy days in July