DENNISTON

Hokitika Guardian, 11 July 1929, Page 8

DENNISTON

(J.C. in Auckland “Star.”) Denniston, the centre of the famous Ooallirookdalo cofil mines, is a curious place. Not much lias been heard from it concerning the damage done by the recent earthquakes, but so far as has been learned the hundreds of workers and their families have not been frightened away from their jobs and homes up yonder nearly thousand feet above sea level. Most of the West Coast coal mines are closely approached by rail, but Denniston is different. To reach it one goes out from Westport by a branch rail line, the Waimangaroa section, as far as Conn’s Creek, at the foot of Mount Rochfort (a forested range named after John Rochfort, the explorer and surveyor), and then up a zigzag bush road to the high plateau on which the mining settlements stand.

Standing at the Conn’s Creek station one sees before him a great steep mountain side up which there is a double line of iron rails to the summit, at an. angle which seems quite forty-five degrees. These are the inclines down which the coal trucks run from the coal mines. Presently—if the mines are working—a black speck comes into sight on the lofty skyline. It slides down one of the spider’s web Tine of rails, dips out of sight on an intervening level, springs over the next rise, and, increasing rapidly in size as it approaches, becomes a big coal truck that glides smoothly and swiftly down and halts just at one’s feet. While it is on its way down the steep incline another truck, an empty, shoots from the siding at the foot of the hill, and away it goes up the giddy shoot, passing the other with the speed of a railway train on the face hundreds of feet above. The down-coming loaded truck hauls up the empty ones by a wire-rone haulage system. An iron truck weighs five tons empty; when loaded the weight is twelve tons. In some places the incline seems almost perpendicular; the total fall is 1750 feet in a mile. The whole of the coal from the Denniston plateau comes down this pre-carious-looking route at the rate of hundreds of tons a day. Stores for the mining settlements go up this way, too, but passengersi are barred; they must go the long roundabout way by the bush road, seven miles or so.

Far up there, 1958 feet above the sea, to be ’ exact, is the mountain coal-winning township of Denniston, with its hotels, stores and dwellings. Many of the houses arc built on hillsides so steep that they have to be supported party on long timber piles. It is a bleak, windy place., this phueau; no one would live there for the pleasure of the thing. But there is wealth galore there, black wealth. It was Von Haast, the geologist, who discovered the great Coalbrookdale seam, sixty-eight years ago and gave it its name. He was clambering with his party up <i little waterfall into a deep gully when lie stopped to examine the likely-looking rock formation, and on scraping away the moss lie found a seam of good coal eight feet thick.

But gold stirs the imagination more than coal. One, day, after watching that mountain switch-back from below we walked up the track alongside the creek that comes tumbling down past tbe station. A few minutes took us into the heart of tbe bush, in a gorge-like valley. We came to a deserted gold mine, with its battery house, winding gear and decayed lmc of water flaming. It was half-bidden in the second growth of forest jungle, and a fern tree grew in a doorway oi the battery house. Along tbe track a hundred yards farther and all signs of man’s handiwork had disappeared, except the old water race.' And just then, round a rocky cornice, w'e came on a solitary “hatter,” a wintewbiskered prospector of the olden stamp, kneeling beside a rivulet and carefully panning out a tin dishful ol wash dirt. For the confirmed prospector Lady Liick may pop up m bis battered wash dish at any moment.