Driving around Denniston township | West Coast | New Zealand | 4K

Categories: West Coast Region

Tags: denniston, driving, new zealand, west coast

Added: 2 years ago

Driving around Denniston township, on the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island.

Denniston is a small, almost deserted coal town, 27 km northeast 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.

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.