Moonlight Creek Coal Co. – Concept (continued)
Black Diamonds
Drilling and detailed geological surveys had shown the presence of a sizeable area of coal in the headwaters of Moonlight Creek in 1911-12. This was outlined, in yellow, on the map in the Annual Report of the Mines Department for 1912 (known, in later years, as ‘the Yellow Blob’). This could have been an extension of the nearby State Mine, but in 1913 the government decided to cut its losses and abandon the area.
After the closure of the State Mine in 1914 there was considerable private interest in obtaining a lease to mine this coal-bearing area. The problem was how to transport the coal from an inaccessible area surrounded by dense forest. Local sawmiller Walter Sullivan, who had constructed a bush railway up the Kokiri Gorge to his small mill near the mouth of Moonlight Creek in 1912, proposed to extend this 4 kms upstream to the coal. Finance for the railway extension and mine development was raised by a share issue, and the Moonlight Creek mine started producing coal in 1929.
The Moonlight Creek mine (1929-1986) was to become one of the longest-lived mines in New Zealand. At its peak in the 1940s it employed 70 men, producing over 40,000 tonnes a year. Total production was over a million tonnes.
The first lease over the Moonlight Creek area was taken out by Robert Watson (Granity) and Francis Harriet James (Wellington). As Mrs James was the wife of the General Manager of the State Coal Mines, this caused “considerable comment“. But as State Coal Mines had declined to work the area a decade earlier, there was hardly a case for conflict of interest.
The mine was remote from the nearest settlements. Some of the miners lived in Kokiri, and had an 8-km bush walk to work every day. The rest lived in Paparoa, and rode to work in the empty mine tubs. A road to the mine from Kokiri was opened in 1948, and miners were transported by bus.
