West Coast

Extending more than 500 kilometres along the western side of the South Island, the West Coast is the longest region in New Zealand. Hemmed in between the mountains and the sea, only a narrow strip of land is inhabitable.

One of the wettest parts of New Zealand, the West Coast has a great extent of native forest. With spectacular scenery, including glaciers that reach down to near sea level, it has the feel of isolated, frontier country.

The discovery of payable quantities of gold in late 1864 sent miners swarming across the region. The West Coast’s peak production of gold – more than 15 tonnes – occurred in 1866–67, and yields declined rapidly thereafter. During this period most of the claims were small. Equipment was relatively primitive, and sluicing was small-scale. The easily won alluvial gold was soon exhausted, and sluicing and dredging on a larger scale was needed to find gold.

The discovery of gold-bearing quartz veins led to the opening of hard-rock mines in the Reefton–Lyell area. Ore obtained from the mines was transported out of the mine and crushed in a stamper battery to recover the gold. 

During a dredging boom in the early 1900s there were 40–50 dredges on the West Coast, but these had largely disappeared by the First World War. Larger electric dredges were developed in the 1920s and 1930s, often with overseas capital.

The West Coast is the only part of New Zealand where high-quality bituminous coal is found. The main coalfields (Greymouth, Reefton and Buller) had been discovered by the early 1860s, and production was soon underway. There was a strong demand for bituminous coal as fuel for steamships, railway locomotives and industrial boilers, as well as for coal gas production.

Because the price of gold was fixed for much of the 20th century, gold mining gradually became less profitable. The last underground mine closed in 1951, and after that there was only small production from a single dredge.

The demand for bituminous coal decreased from the mid-1950s as ships and trains switched to oil, coal gas was replaced by natural gas and electricity, and less coal was used for household heating.