The Luminaries

Episode 1

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Sun, Feb 14, 202156 mins

Nine months earlier Anna Wetherell meets Emery Staines on a ship bound for the goldfields of New Zealand and agrees to meet him later at his hotel The Majestic. However Anna is illiterate and is sent to a different hotel by the scheming Lydia Wells, who appears to have a plan to use her for her own ends. Meantime in The Majestic Hotel Emery Staines is advised by a fellow drinker Francis Carver that he would be better off trying his hand at prospecting in nearby Hokitika rather than in Dunedin. Carver tries to persuade him the enter a Contract of Sponsorship, in which he, Carver, will provide the necessary funding and equipment needed to prospect, in return for an even split in any gold he finds. However the offer is interrupted by an attack on Carver by a 'chinaman', which is repelled. A contemporary view of events shows Anna now to be a drug addled prostitute trying to secure her release from gaol using gold sewn into a dress she's wearing. She also has some connection with recently deceased Crosbie Wells, husband of Lydia Wells.