‘If you want to read about the real history of New Zealand, then Phil Walsh’s research into the history of of this small coalfield will set you right.
The Papahaua Range, which towers over Westport on the West Coast of the South Island contains high quality coal deposits in veins breaking near the surface and wedged into hillsides. However, the landscape is precipitous, cut by creeks, frequently drenched by deluges of rainwater, swept by gales, broken by earthquakes, rockfalls, and landslides. The coal does not give itself up without an heroic struggle.
Walsh begins his saga with an historical sweep of geological time, placing Westcoast coal into the context of the planet’s story, but with zoom-lens drama, soon takes the reader onto the windswept tops of the Denniston Plateau before dropping us down boggy tracks to the aptly named Cascade Creek, before laying out the story of the mines stitting high above the Buller River that flows through the eponymous gorge to throw its water into the Tasman Sea.
The Cascade Westport Coal Company was formed in 1925 to raise finance for the commercial extraction of coal from a site, already being worked by a co-operative of enterprising miners: Company and the Coal [Cascade] Creek Co-operative Party came together to realise their ambitions, to make money and provide employment.
The new joint enterprise decided that the only way to get the coal to transport was via a wooden flume built from the mine down the face of Cascade Creek to the Buller River, where the Westport-Inangahua railway was being built—itself a feat of heroic proportions.
Walsh covers all the engineering problems, the ups and down of the market, the politics, strikes and double dealing, but more rivetingly, the wealth of human stories. The reader may too quickly jump to the conclusion that the conditions of work were so harsh that anyone opting to live in the camp at Cascade Creek, or in the cabins strung along the flume, or by the railway yards, were out of their minds. They would be mistaken. The tough men and women loved the work, the freedom to live rough in rugged country. Children brought up in Cascade Creek, their memoirs recounted by Walsh, write eloquently of near idyllic childhoods.
This is a must read for all those complaining about pandemics, inflation, food chains—get real, get with the rugged West Coasters. They could teach us a lot.’