• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

A journey through Denniston Stories and research from the interpretation panels at Denniston Coalfields Historic Area COVER: ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY WELLINGTON NZ 001228 WELLINGTON ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY COVER: For more information Contents on Denniston Introduction: Black gold 1 Coalfields HISTORIC AREA An overview Old coal – new gold 2 VISIT Discovery and industry 1861 – 1881 4 Department of Conservation Coal mining in the Denniston Plateau 1882 – 2010 7 www.doc.govt.nz/historicdenniston United we stand 10 Friends of the Hill Museum Denniston www.denniston.org.nz A look at Denniston ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY WELLINGTON NZ 001321 WELLINGTON ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY Coaltown Museum Westport Denniston coalfields historic area 12 www.coaltownmuseum.com Places in the town 14 www.teara.govt.nz Place and street names 18 www.paperspast.natlib.govt.nz www.timeframes.natlib.govt.nz Denniston at work The Denniston Incline 22 READ A girl and her doll, Denniston, 1944. The Denniston Brakehead 36 The Spirit of Denniston Hill – Dai Hayward Screens and storage bins 40 Memories of Denniston Folk – Dai Hayward Top incline brake 42 Denniston: Then and Now – Les Wright ABOUT THIS DOCUMENT Backshunt and donkey winch 44 Denniston’s Incline: Coal from the Clouds – Banbury mine 1879 – 1890 46 Images and text taken from signs and Bill Prebble Men on the job underground 47 information panels in and around Denniston The Denniston Miners’ Union – a centennial Mine workshops on the rope road and surface road 48 Coalfields Historic Area. Wording and original history – Len Richardson and Gerard Morris design work by Janet Bathgate Design Aerial ropeway 1954 – 1968 50 Coaling from the Clouds – R.J. Meyer Clipping and weighing 52 The Denniston Affair – W.A. Munro Haulage and power house 53 The Hill – Celia Adams SPECIAL THANKS The Denniston Rose – Jenny Pattrick Life at Denniston Buller District Council Dancing in the Wilderness – Felicity Price Windswept huddle 54 Les Wright, Punakaiki Town life 56 Buller Print, Westport Home life 61 Development West Coast Plateau life 65 Staff of the Coaltown Museum Pit-propped passages 69 Staff of Solid Energy, New Zealand Exploring Denniston Denniston Heritage Trust, Westport Denniston Bridle Track 72 Sylvia and Gary James, Friends of the Hill Denniston Brakehead Walk 74 Museum Published by: Department of Conservation New Zealand Railway and Locomotive Society West Coast Tai Poutini Conservancy Incorporated Private Bag 701, Hokitika New Zealand May 2013 Editing and application of original design concept: Publishing Team, DOC National Office FRIENDS OF THE HILL MUSEUM Introduction BLACK GOLD Welcome to Denniston, the area known as the Brakehead at the top of the Denniston Incline. The Incline, locally called the Eighth Wonder of the World, lowered coal 518 metres in altitude from amongst the clouds of the Rochfort Plateau to Conns Creek railway yard at the base of the hill. Eighty full wagons travelled the Incline a day; around 350 tonnes of coal. Hewn from underground, hauled by rope road across a barren terrain, weighed, screened, stored and poured into wagons, the coal was transported to Westport wharf and dropped into the holds of waiting colliers. The Westport Coal Company’s Denniston operation was a burning star. The coal was of superb quality but the people of the Plateau were the true black gold. Denniston is a story told by many, each unearthing another memory be it of personal hardship, engineering ingenuity, or humorous recollection. The stories presented here are just a few of many more found in books, on film and in museums. 1 AN OVERView OLD COAL – NEW GOLD THE AGE OF STEAM ALTERNATIVE ENERGY EXPANDING USES NEW AGE BLACK GOLD With its bright, black, bituminous coal, Denniston flourished with and fuelled a In 1960 New Zealand’s coal production Mined principally to burn in the 1870s, coal is The oil shortages of the 1970s turned around the fortunes of coal – an energy spirited age of steam that drove the engines of the industrial revolution all around peaked at around 3 million tons, one-third now also used in the manufacture of a wide range source that did not depend upon overseas supply. Coal was once again a the world. of it from the West Coast. Then came a of products, many of which we take for granted sought-after commodity world-wide. period of steady decline as industrial and in our everyday life – soap, washing powder, At the start of the 1870s coal was New Zealand’s fifth-largest import, needed Today, New Zealand’s Waikato reserves are mostly used for making steel and domestic users changed to alternative energy. perfume, printing ink, sheep dip, antiseptic, weed to power ships, trains, gas works and factories and used extensively for home generating electricity. Those industries consume about two thirds of the total Two former big users to switch away were killer, adhesives, timber preservative ... the list heating. This trade deficit was turned around by leaders of commerce such as the New Zealand production. The high ranked bituminous coals – found only on shipping to oil, and railways to electricity and goes on. Westport Coal Company which formed a ‘southern octopus’ monopoly to mine the West Coast – are once again a premium export product. diesel, while natural gas from Taranaki began the rich West Coast coal fields. New and future uses are developing to replace coal gas. New Zealand coal reserves are estimated to continuously. Synthetic By 1905 New Zealand ranked 17th in the world for coal production and although be 16 billion tonnes; the West Coast region’s Not only did the Denniston mines suffer from crude oil can be produced 1925–26 its total output of 1.5 million tons seems minuscule to the United Kingdom’s estimated in-ground reserves are 983 million the declining demand for bituminous coal, from coal through a process 236 million tons, the bituminous coal hewn from the Denniston Mines was in tonnes. Over 75% of the recoverable West Coast they also lost customers to the open cast called coal liquefication. high demand at home and abroad reserves are in the Greymouth coalfield (mostly Waikato mines of the central North Island Coal can be converted for both industrial and household underground) and the Buller coalfield (mostly that produced lower grade coal. With coal to methane through a markets. This continued for half a opencast). quality not at stake, there was an increasing coal gasification process, century. preference for the safer, open cast source potentially creating fuel for nearer the major markets. cars, or aviation; or mixed with natural gas and used in 1960 industry and home heating. As new processes evolve, future generations might wonder why their ancestors 1920 wastefully burnt so much of this rare and precious fossil fuel. G & K RADCLIFFE BRIGHT LIGHT IMAGES ABOVE Advertisement for the NZ and South Seas Exhibition at Dunedin in 1925-26. The part played by Coalbrookdale coal in saving HMS ‘Calliope’ from a Pacific hurricane was used to advertise the Westport Coal Company for more than a decade after the Royal Navy had ceased to use it. MODERN DAY MINING SOLID ENERGY NEW ZEALAND SOLID ENERGY NEW ZEALAND SOLID ENERGY NEW ZEALAND SOLID ENERGY NEW ZEALAND 2 3 AN OVERView ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY WELLINGTON NZ DISCOVERY and INDUSTRY 1861 – 1881 PURE COAL 1861 WESTPORT COLLIERY COMPANY WESTPORT COAL COMPANY LTD 1878 1881 12th November 1881 “... I found, to my great joy, a large seam of good coal. Of course, The Argus speaks as follows of the proposed I stopped my party who very soon returned to assist me in Robert Blair Denniston and William Cooper, With new colliery works completed, the first company to extend the capital and workings of engaged to carry out topographical and consignment of coal went down the Incline the Westport Colliery Company and to acquire WITNESS THE OTAGO uncovering the seam, which, on removing the moss and ice a fleet of collier steamers :- “In our advertising mineral surveys on the Plateau, promoted in 1880. The company then restructured to columns to-day will be found the prospectus of that encumbered the fall, proved to be eight feet two inches in a vision of coal production to a group of inject money into the mines operation. In an important undertaking- the Westport Coal Dunedin financiers. When the New Zealand 1881 the Westport Coal Company Limited Company, Buller River, New Zealand, which, thickness of pure coal ...” under the auspices of an influential Dunedin Government built a railway from Westport was formed with four times the original J. Haast Report 1861 and Melbourne provisional directory, seeks to Waimangaroa and ship loading facilities capital, the old principals as new directors, to take advantage of the present state of the In 1861 German geologist/explorer Julius Haast, accompanied by colliery at Westport to service the coal industry, the an expanded portfolio including the Brunner money market in this Colony to increase its capital by an issue of shares here. engineer James Burnett, found a 2.5 metre seam of rich bituminous coal on the businessmen were spurred into action. They and Wallsend mines and their own The company is projected upon the basis Rochfort Plateau. The two men had been commissioned by the Nelson Provincial formed the Westport Colliery Company in fleet of colliers to carry their of uniting the coalfields belonging to the 4 Greymouth and Wallsend Colliery company Government to follow up on an earlier coal discovery by John Rochfort. 1878 with a capital of £1,000,000. In the coal to market. 2 1 2 with those owned by the Westport Colliery process they absorbed two struggling Z N Company, and of expending a considerable Rochfort and Burnett then teamed up the following year, in 1862, to survey the N companies that had begun work on an incline O T amount of additional capital (£100,000), Plateau and established the existence of an estimated 72,600,000 tonnes of coal.

Load more

  8

Copy Link