Driving Denniston Road from Denniston to Waimangaroa | West Coast | New Zealand | 4K

Categories: West Coast Region

Tags: denniston, denniston road, driving, new zealand, waimangaroa, west coast

Added: 2 years ago

Driving Denniston Road from Denniston to Waimangaroa, on the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island. This is the road back to Waimangaroa from the historic Denniston Coal mine area. The road down the hill gives an example of the coastal view the old timers would of had.

Denniston is a small, almost deserted coal town, 27 km north-east of Westport. It was named after R. B. Denniston, manager of the first major mine to open in the 1870s and later a director of the Westport Coal Company. On a bare plateau at an altitude of 600 metres, Denniston was the bleakest of the coal mining towns, often shrouded in fog. The nearby town of Burnetts Face was squashed into a narrow valley, close to the original coal discovery. Jenny Pattrick's novel The Denniston rose (2003) gives a depressingly vivid picture of the lives of miners and their families.

Waimangaroa is a small mining and milling town, 17 km north of Westport, at the foot of the winding road up to Denniston.

Coal was transported from the plateau down to a branch railway line by the Denniston incline, a spectacular cable railway. Mining ceased in the 1990s, and only a few inhabitants remain. Part of the town is a historic reserve, with a museum and walking tracks around mining relics.