Westport is situated on the eastern bank of the Buller River close to the mouth. Within 6–8 miles south-east and east the country rises steeply to the bush-clad Paparoa Range and the Mount Rochfort Plateau. The railway from Greymouth via Stillwater and Reefton and a branch goods line from Mokihinui Mine terminate at the town. By road Westport is 144 miles south-west of Nelson, 62 miles south-west of Karamea, 50 ½ miles northwest of Reefton (47 miles by rail), and 65 miles north-east of Greymouth via Punakaiki (94 miles by rail via Reefton). Westport is a river port with berthage along the river bank in the borough.

The farming activities of the district are dairying, sheep and cattle raising, some mixed farming, and market gardening. Flax is cut at various localities for processing at Westport. Timber milling is important and is carried on throughout the district. The most important primary industry is coal mining. The principal bituminous coal mines are located at or near Seddonville (29 miles northeast), Stockton (24 miles north-east), Millerton (21 miles north-east), and Denniston (17 miles north-east). Sub-bituminous coal is mined in the lower Buller Gorge (about 22 miles south-east), and lignite is obtained from opencast mines at Charleston (16 ½ miles south-west). Lime is quarried at Totara River (about 12 miles southwest) and near Karamea. Near Cape Foulwind (about 7 miles west) there is a large cement works. Westport is the commercial and administrative centre and port for the northern West Coast area. The town industrial activities include the manufacture of butter, beer and stout, furniture, coal gas, concrete and earthenware pipes, knitwear and hosiery; processing of bacon and hams; whitebait canning in season; flaxmilling; sawmilling; and general engineering. Large workshops serve the railways in the district. A plant for the manufacture of briquettes at Ngakawau (19 miles northeast) came into production early in 1965.

Tasman in 1642, Cook in 1770, and d'Urville in 1826 sailed along the coast of Karamea Bight, but were not impressed with the country. In January 1844 a sealer and whaler, Joseph Toms (Geordie Bolts), brought his vessel The Three Brothers into the mouth of the Buller. Thomas Brunner and Charles Heaphy travelled southward through the locality in 1846. In June 1847 Brunner and Maoris passed through the district. James Mackay, with Maoris, visited the mouth of the Buller in 1857 en route to the Grey district. Rochfort and party came from Nelson in the cutter Supply during 1859 to survey the Buller area. They discovered good coal and gold. In 1860 J. Mackay passed through after completing the purchase of the West Coast. Julius von Haast, with James Burnett and party, discovered a thick seam of coal north-east of the Buller mouth in 1860. In June 1861, 16 miners arrived in the Jane and established a settlement on the present site of Westport.

On 29 January 1862, when the Tasmanian Maid, first steamer to cross the bar, arrived, the population was estimated at 200 (170 Maoris). In that year gold mining activities were accelerated. Gold mining was mainly concentrated in the Buller Gorge, at Lyell Creek (40 miles upstream), after 1863, and at Brighton (Tiromoana) and nearby localities and at Charleston after 1866. Between 1883 and the early 1900s several gold dredges worked on the Buller River between Berlins and Lyell. Gold was also found in the Inangahua Valley, then at Waimangaroa, Mokihinui, and on terraces north of Westport. In 1867 further finds were made at Addisons (7 miles south) and, in 1870, rich reefs were discovered in the Reefton district. Gold mining began to decline after 1900. Coal mining had modest beginnings, chiefly because of difficulty of access, but was well established by the late 1870s. Railway construction commenced in 1874 from Westport and the line to Seddonville was opened with the purchase of a private line in 1895. The railway to Reefton was begun in 1906, but through communication with Christchurch and Greymouth was not achieved until September 1942. Uranium was discovered in a lower Buller Gorge locality (about 15 miles south-east) by Jacobsen and Cassin in November 1955 but, after subsequent exploration, mining ceased in 1962. Westport was constituted a borough in 1873. The name dates from 1862, probably after Westport, on Clew Bay, in Connaught.

POPULATION: 1951 census, 5,505; 1956 census, 5,522; 1961 census, 5,464.

by Brian Newton Davis, M.A., Vicar, St. Philips, Karori West, Wellington and Edward Stewart Dollimore, Research Officer, Department of Lands and Survey, Wellington.

Westland, the last of the 10 provinces to be established, was created by the Province of Westland Act of 1873, almost on the eve of the abolition of provincial government. Before this the area had undergone a sequence of changes in political status that made it unique in the country.

Boundary Difficulties

Until 1868 Westland was part of the Province of Canterbury. The northern boundary with Nelson Province, as defined by Governor Sir George Grey's general proclamation of provincial boundaries in February 1853, followed the Grey and Arnold Rivers to Lake Brunner, then ran in a straight line across unknown country to the head of the Hurunui River. At that time the South Island west of the main divide was a forested wilderness, virtually unknown to Europeans and inhabited by about 100 Maoris. The goldrushes of 1864–67 resulted in an influx of about 30,000 people to west Canterbury and south-west Nelson, and a lively and migratory community with strong identity of economic and social interests quickly grew up on both sides of the provincial boundary. Little did Governor Grey and his advisers anticipate that their boundary was to bisect the West Coast gold-bearing country in what was to become one of its most densely populated parts and along one of its main routes of communication. As Sir John Hall said later: “What nature intended for one district the New Zealand Government had made into two”. The boundary proved irksome to miners, officials, and merchants alike, but, despite the anomaly, the decision of 1853 remained effective on the political map of New Zealand until the abolition of the provinces in 1876. Fortunately abolition came just before there were intensive coal-mining developments at Brunner, where the most accessible coal seam outcropped on the Nelson side of the boundary and dipped south into Westland.

Early Administration

When the inrush of diggers gathered momentum early in 1865, the Canterbury provincial government recognised the distinctive administrative needs of the west coast by proclaiming the whole area beyond the main divide to be the West Canterbury Goldfields. George S. Sale was appointed goldfields commissioner with very wide discretionary powers to supervise all branches of provincial government there and was responsible only to the executive of the Provincial Council in Christchurch. Administrative headquarters were established at Hokitika which became, in effect, a provincial subcapital. Although this method of political organisation of a newly settled district was probably the nearest approach to autocracy by nominated officials since the establishment of responsible government in New Zealand, it was much more restrained than the arbitrary administration of the goldfields of Victoria in the early 1850s.

Tensions soon developed between “West” and “East” Canterbury mainly over the provision of public works. Especially obnoxious, in the eyes of West Coasters, was the decision to build a transalpine dray road from Christchurch to Hokitika via Arthur's Pass and debit its construction costs to revenues raised on the goldfields. The road was an expression of the misplaced hopes of Christchurch merchants to emulate the success of the Dunedin merchants who had profited so greatly from trade with the goldfields of interior Otago. The politically vocal section of the West Coast community – the merchants, publicans, and shop keepers – wanted the money to be spent on local tracks, roads, and bridges to link the many scattered mining camps with the seaports, as well as on harbour improvements to make safer their already flourishing sea trade with Melbourne and Dunedin. Matters came to a head in July 1867 when the discretionary powers of the goldfields commissioner to spend money on public works were curtailed. A separation league sponsored by the businessmen of Hokitika and the miners of the nearby Kaniere diggings dispatched a petition to the Legislative Council praying that the West Canterbury Gold-fields be made into a separate province. The citizens of Greymouth, anxious lest the yoke of Christ-church be replaced by that of Hokitika, dispatched a separate petition to the General Assembly urging that the Greymouth district be annexed to the Province of Nelson. The aspirations of Hokitika, however, won the day. The “centralist” ministry under E. W. Stafford, then in ascendancy, saw another opportunity to weaken the provincial system by dismembering Canterbury, one of the strongest provinces.

The County Established

Rather than add to the already cumbersome machinery of provincial institutions, the central government decided to experiment with a new form of local government and in 1868 established the County of Westland. The country had the same wide range of administrative functions as the provinces – for example, the sale of land, the control of education and hospitals, public works, surveys, and administration of the goldfields – but legislative powers were reserved to the central government. The idea seems to have originated with the Canterbury pastoralist and landowner, John Hall, and many people anticipated that a county form of government would soon be applied to the steadily increasing number of outlying pockets of settlement in New Zealand. The experiment was not a conspicuous success. The County of Westland was saddled with 30 per cent of the Canterbury provincial debt at a time of declining goldfields revenue, and the deliberations of the County Council were notorious for their displays of petty rivalries and unseemly conduct. Since the General Assembly was required to spend time in purely local legislation for Westland, it was decided in 1873 to end the country's unique political status and invest the area with full status as a province. Because of its anomalous northern boundary, the Provincial District has never been satisfactory as a definition of an area of economic and social community of interest. The boundary bisects the boroughs of Brunner and of Greymouth. When the counties were established in 1876 as units of local government (with greatly shorn powers compared with the provinces and the old County of Westland), the Grey county incorporated what was virtually the hinterland of Greymouth and included parts of the Westland and Nelson Provincial Districts.

Gold Discoveries

The few Maoris in Westland before European settlement were migratory food gatherers who established small temporary settlements near the river mouths. The most valued areas were the riverbeds of the Arahura and Taramakau where the highly prized nephrite or greenstone was gathered as pebbles or rough blocks and carried on men's backs across alpine passes to Canterbury and thence throughout New Zealand. Apart from spasmodic visits by sealers from 1810 onwards, Europeans took little interest in the area until the discovery of payable gold by Albert Hunt and others on the Greenstone River in July 1864. The subsequent influx of population, mainly from the declining alluvial goldfields of Otago and Victoria, comprised the only large group of people to enter Westland and was responsible for the first considerable settlement of Europeans in a New Zealand rain forest environment. Alluvial gold was worked on the coastal beaches throughout the length of the province. It was worked in greater quantities, though distributed patchily, in the stream and high-terrace gravels of a 5-mile-wide zone between Ross and the Arnold Valley. The diggers entered Westland at two points: by land across Harper or Arthur's Passes and thence via the Taramakau Valley, and by sea through the bar-bound river port of Hokitika. New discoveries were made rapidly in 1865 and 1866, and by 1867 the outer limits of the gold country had been reached and the swirl of population movements subsided. The dense forest cover, however, made prospecting a chancy business and in 1876 there was a final stampede of some 4,000 to Kumara, situated within a few miles of the initial gold finds of 12 years earlier.

In the 1860s high-pressure hydraulic sluicing was introduced and maintained gold production for another 50 years, although with steadily diminishing yields. Capital, for the construction of dams and many miles of water races, came partly from the boom-year trading profits of merchants, publicans, and storekeepers, and partly by central government funds under the Public Works and Immigration Act of 1871. In 1875 a special settlement, jointly sponsored by the central and provincial governments, was established at the far south of Westland in the swamp forests on the coastal plain between Jackson Bay and the Haast River. There were 400 settlers of varied European nationality, having only recently arrived in the country and ill equipped for the rigours of bush life under an annual rainfall of some 200 in. This dubious and ill-starred venture in pioneering was the only instance of organised settlement in Westland and within a few years most of the settlers had left the district.

Development of Farming

In the 1870s and 1880s the more lightly timbered river flats in North Westland were slowly cleared for farming and the produce marketed in the local towns and mining camps. Due to isolation, very little progress was made south of Ross. The northern extremity of the Provincial District at Greymouth and Brunner received impetus from the development of the Greymouth coalfield in the 1880s. Hokitika, the premier town and seaport of the gold-rush era, gradually declined as Greymouth with its better harbour and central position could tap the trade of those mining areas on the West Coast which had stable or expanding populations.

Sawmilling

Renewed stimulus came in the early years of the twentieth century with the development of dairying, and pioneer farming extended rapidly on the river flats of South Westland – many of the farms being taken up by the sons of the gold miners. In 1900 a gold-dredging boom led to the erection of some 25 steam-driven gold dredges of Otago design. Few of these were successful because the light construction proved unsuited to the heavy boulders and buried timber of the West Coast river beds. Of greater consequence was the rapid expansion of sawmilling after 1895. Large mills were erected on the Greymouth-Ross railway line and on the Midland line in the Arnold Valley where there was ready access to high-volume rimu timber stands on level terrain. Sixty years of clear-felling followed by fires and waterlogging in the cutover, has left much of North Westland in a devastated condition. Logging is now conducted mainly in hilly country and in some State forests felling is carried out in strips to check waterlogging and promote regeneration. The provincial district holds almost one-half of the Dominion's remaining native softwood timber resources.

The final revival of gold mining began in 1919 with the construction at Rimu of an electrically operated gold dredge of Californian design. Much prospecting of dredging sites was carried out in the 1930s by companies representing Australian, American, and New Zealand interests, and after 1937, when an electric power transmission line from Lake Coleridge was completed, several dredges were at work. Most of these ceased operations between 1948 and 1961, leaving only one dredge working in the Taramakau River at Kumara. Since the Second World War considerable interest has been shown in the development of farm land.

Farming practices had lagged behind those of other parts of New Zealand but awareness of the diminishing resources of the extractive industries (gold, coal, and timber) has promoted considerable improvements on existing farms and the first experimental ventures by the State to reclaim marginal or “problem” lands.

Social Characteristics

The highest recorded gold-rush population was 15,400 in 1867. There have been several minor fluctuations but little growth since the first years of settlement when most of the population consisted of young males of working age. In 1874 there were 14,860 people, 15,714 in 1911, 18,506 in 1956 and 17,954 in 1961. Since 1911 Westland has had the smallest population of any provincial district, and since 1951 it has had less than 1 per cent of the Dominion's population. Westland has always had the highest proportion of males to females of any provincial district, a reflection of the manner of its early settlement, its continued “pioneer” character, and the predominance of primary industries. Persons of Irish birth formed about one-third of the gold-rush community, compared with about 14 per cent of the European population of New Zealand at the time. A permanent legacy of the gold-rush migration has been the high proportion of Roman Catholics in the population – for 90 years it has stood consistently at about 30 per cent, or twice the ratio for the country as a whole. Other distinctive national groups included a relatively high number of continental Europeans among the gold-rush migrants and the several hundred male Chinese who settled in the alluvial-gold-bearing zone after 1872. As local employment opportunities have seldom kept pace with the natural increase in the population, Westland has long been a region of outwards migration to other parts of New Zealand, notably to Christchurch and to the North Island. The only period during this century of net inwards migration was during the depression of the 1930s when many men were employed as subsidised prospectors and, later, on public works projects. Other social characteristics of the population are less easily defined, but the widely accepted image of the “West Coaster” depicts a product of a close-knit community, generous, friendly, and self-reliant, yet distrustful of authority. Westland's many expatriates have undoubtedly fostered this image.

by Murray McCaskill, M.A., PH.D., Reader in Geography, University of Canterbury.

• Westland's Golden Century, 1860–1960, Westland Centennial Council (1959)
• The Romance of Westland, Harrop, A. J. (1923)
• The West Coast Region, National Resources Survey Part I, Ministry of Works (1959)
• The West Coast Gold Rushes, May, Philip Ross (1962).

The West Nelson Mountains are considered to include the ranges lying north of the Buller River and west of the Moutere depression in the north-west corner of the South Island. Unlike most other parts of New Zealand, there is no well-defined axial range, but rather a group of mountain ranges of similar altitude and form separated by fast-flowing rivers deeply entrenched in mountain gorges. The largest mountain group–the Tasman Mountain–lies between the Aorere and Karamea Rivers and extends across to the West Coast. The highest peak is Aorere (5,604 ft) at the head of the Aorere River. Lying west of these mountains are a series of smaller ranges fronting the Takaka-upper Karamea depression and separated by major east-flowing rivers draining towards this depression. These are, from south to the north–the Peel, Lockett, Snowden, Douglas, Devil, Anatoki, and Haupiri Ranges. The highest peak is Devil River Peak (5,823 ft) in the Devil Range. East of the Takaka – upper Karamea depression lies the north-east-trending Pikikiruna and Arthur Ranges overlooking Tasman Bay, and the Moutere depression on the east, rising to 5,990 ft in the Twins. South of the upper Karamea and Wangapeka Valleys are the north-trending Glasgow, Lyell, Owen, Lookout, and Hope Ranges, separated by major tributaries of the Buller River and rising to 6,155 ft in Mount Owen. The Wakamarama and Iwituroa Ranges lie north-west of the Aorere-Heaphy depression extending to the coast.

The West Nelson mountains are a series of block-faulted and block-folded mountain ranges composed of ancient Paleozoic sedimentary, metamorphic, and granitic rocks of extremely complex structure. The Paleozoic rocks are flanked by and overlain by softer Tertiary sedimentary rocks, largely eroded from the mountain ranges but preserved in the down-faulted depressions. The smooth, plateau-like summits common in these mountains are preserved remnants of the early Tertiary land surface, partly modified by marine erosion, that was buried below the Tertiary sediments. Most of the region is forest covered, with settlement and farming activities confined to the lowlands and coastal flats and terraces. Although there are no permanent snow-fields or glaciers, the ranges are snow covered in the winter and spring months to below 4,000 ft. A power station in the middle Cobb Valley has an installed capacity of 32,000 kW and is fed by water piped through a mountain ridge from an artificial lake in the upper Cobb Valley.

by George William Grindley, M.SC., New Zealand Geological Survey, Lower Hutt.

However interesting historically are the towns of the Coast, at best they appear unattractive places in which to live and their appearance mirrors the relative stagnation of the economy and the slow growth of population. During the decade 1951–61 the urban population of the West Coast declined by 0·8 per cent and only two towns, Greymouth and Hokitika, showed an increase – 16 and 18 respectively. Only one county, Murchison, showed an increase of population; all the others registered a decline, so that the total rural population decreased by 10·3 per cent. Overall, the regional population fell by 5·2 per cent so that in 1961 the West Coast contained only 1,704 more persons than it did in 1911. In the period April 1953 to April 1961, although the labour force engaged in manufacturing increased by 5 per cent, which is well below the national level of increase, the total labour force declined by 7·43 per cent. In response to the challenge of these rather depressing figures, a number of investigating bodies have put forward a variety of proposals designed to stimulate growth and diversify the economy. A recommendation for the establishment of a large-scale integrated forest-product industry has initially received the warmest reception.

Despite the exceedingly low percentage of the total population contained in the region, it has been able to exercise an extraordinary influence in national affairs, due partly to the historical importance of the area, partly to the importance of the West Coast seats in the politics of the Labour Party, and to the strength of the coalminers' trade unions. The resentment of the West Coasters at the treatment they were supposedly receiving was expressed in the 1962 by-elections when, in a safe seat, the Labour candidate's majority fell to 294. But the issue goes deeper than party politics. Technological developments are against the coal industry and alternative sources of fuel are welcomed by sorely tried consumers. Where science, technology, or affluence favours West Coast industries, as with timber and tourism, the old traditions of the exploitative economies are inhibitory. A number of new industries have been suggested for the area, but before the tide can be turned–and in a period of rapid national demographic growth an overall decline of 5 per cent indicates a strongly adverse tide–the whole economy of the region, the pattern of its urban settlements, and its demographic structure need remoulding to the requirements of the twentieth century.

by Samuel Harvey Franklin, B.COM.GEOG., M.A.(BIRMINGHAM), Senior Lecturer, Geography Department, Victoria University of Wellington.

• New Zealand Geographer, Vol. 10, Oct 1954, “The Poutini Coast–a Geography of Maori Settlement in Westland”, McCaskill, M.
• Ibid., Vol. 12, Apr 1956, “The Gold Rush Population of Westland”, McCaskill, M.; Ibid., Vol. 12, Oct 1956. “Westland's Forests and the Future”, McCaskill, M.; Ibid., Vol. 17, Apr 1961, “Rehabilitating the West Coast”, McCaskill, M.;Proceedings of the Second New Zealand Geography Conference, Christchurch, 1958, “Miner, Merchant, and Mountain – a Study in the Political Geography of Goldrush Westland, 1865–76”
• Report on Land Utilisation Survey–West Coast Region (1959)
• Report on the West Coast, West Coast Committee of Inquiry (1960)
• Supplementary Report on the West Coast, West Coast Committee of Inquiry (1960)
• West Coast Region – National Resources Survey, Part I, Town and Country Planning Branch, Ministry of Works (1959). The West Coast Gold Rushes, May, P. R. (1962).

Compared with the rest of the country, the region has a high percentage of its labour force in transport, 15·23 per cent in 1961, compared with the national figure of 9·69 per cent. This reflects the exploitative nature of the economy and the region's isolation. Greymouth and Westport are the two ports, each handling approximately 200,000 tons of goods every year with hardly any inward cargo. The past three decades have seen a marked decline in tonnage handled, both timber and coal exports suffering. In addition, the proportion of the total coal production exported by sea has fallen off; in 1956 it was 32 per cent, compared with 88 per cent in 1922.

Both ports are difficult ones, being subjected to silting and building up of river-mouth bars, and lacking protection from the prevailing winds. Over the same period of time the movement of goods by rail has increased considerably as coal, timber, and, especially, livestock have been increasingly deflected from the ports and railed to Christchurch. The rail connection between Christchurch and the Coast was completed in 1923 with the opening of the Otira Tunnel. Previously Inangahua, Reefton, and Hokitika had been connected with Greymouth, and the settlements of the Buller coalfields with Westport. Not until 1944 were Westport and Greymouth linked through Inangahua Junction. By road the West Coast can be approached from Nelson and Marlborough via the Buller Gorge, a difficult route which passes through Murchison, a small centre that serves the local dairying population and a few sawmillers. The road via Arthur's Pass is the most spectacular way to reach the Coast and it is consequently largely a tourist route, sometimes closed in winter. The main route is via the Lewis Pass (2,968 ft) and this carries the greatest density of traffic. Air services, however, speedily link the main parts of the region to the rest of the country.

In April 1961 only 9·48 per cent of the working population of the Greymouth Employment District (its limits correspond closely to the region's) was engaged in farming, compared with the national average of 1·4·38 per cent. By contrast, 21·16 per cent was engaged in mining, quarrying, and other primary activity, compared with the national average of 166 per cent. These figures show the secondary position which agriculture holds in the region's economy. The amount of land readily suited to farming is limited and is dispersed in a number of blocks throughout the length of the region. Both the physical and the social conditions have not favoured farming, so that it is of an extensive nature and management practices are below those prevailing in other regions. The marginal lands, which are estimated to include 11·5 per cent of the total area, have attracted perhaps an unwarranted amount of attention considering the under-utilisation of the areas already farmed. Included within these marginal lands are substantial areas of difficult soils known locally as pakihi lands. There have been some rare successes in improving these soils. Approximately 33,000 acres of them are located close to Westport and, while it is admitted that their development would materially improve the town's economic life, they are considered to be quite unsuitable for immediate investment, though worthy of large-scale experimentation. During the period 1951–52 to 1959–60 the number of cows in milk has increased by 1·21 per cent, the increase being registered largely in Westland county, whilst Grey and Inangahua counties have shown a decline. The percentage increase in sheep shorn is quite high, 72·66, and in lambs shorn, spectacular, 260·78 per cent but the numbers involved are, unfortunately, negligible. It is of interest that these increases have been sustained on slightly lower acreages of area grassed. The total area grassed has declined by 3·7 per cent, but both Westland county and, especially, Inangahua county have shown increases. These figures indicate a welcome trend towards intensification, but at the same time suggest divergent trends of development within the region. As the land utilisation survey of 1959 concluded: “The fact that only 8·6 per cent of the total area is farmable land would seem to indicate that the area as a whole would always be uneconomic as a farming region” and it “always will be only a small contributor to the pastoral wealth of the Dominion”.

Twelve per cent of the country's total production of timber is derived from the West Coast, most of it being cut in Grey and Westland counties. The real significance of the region's sawmilling industry lies in the 24 per cent of the total indigenous timber production which it supplies. Some of the largest remaining virgin and millable expanses of podocarp forest are in the region, rimu being the preferred timber. The beech forests are less favoured because the timbers are incompetitive with those of the podocarps. The silvicultural management of rimu is, however, complex and the regeneration of the stands difficult. Only in recent years has investigation into sustained yield forestry been undertaken and it is recognised that the period of regeneration is a long one. Consequently the exploitation of the more quickly and easily regenerated northern beech forests appears as a more attractive proposition, whilst the establishment of exotic forests on the steeper cut-over rimu lands is under consideration. The derelict condition of vast areas of cut-over land is a constant reminder of the exploitative attitude which has prevailed throughout the economic life of the region. The implementation of a successful and scientific management policy for the forests would be a major factor in refurbishing the region's economy.

The coalfields of the West Coast contain all the measured bituminous reserves of the Dominion. The 905,532 tons which were produced in 1960 represents 30·06 per cent of the total New Zealand coal production, 493,888 tons coming from the Grey field, 300,630 tons from the Buller, and 111,014 tons from the Reefton field. In 1910, when the national coal production was 2,197,362 tons, the West Coast accounted for 60 per cent of that total (1,312,312 tons), so that present production is 30·99 per cent below the levels obtained 50 years ago. Since that period the contribution made by the Grey field to the total West Coast production has increased from approximately one-third to a half, whilst the Buller's contribution has decreased from approximately two-thirds to one-third. The production of the Reefton field has risen from 1 per cent of the total in 1910 to 12·25 per cent of the 1960 total. These figures suggest both the varied histories of the different fields and the general, if slow decline which the whole industry has experienced. In the Grey coalfield there is little opencast mining, and State mines account for most of the employment. Production has declined since the war years, but not to the same extent as in the case of the Buller fields. Most of the miners reside in Runanga, Brunner, or Blackball, and in Greymouth. Characteristically, these settlements have relatively high ratios of males to females and a low proportion of people over 65 years of age. The bulk of the coal produced in the Buller field comes from the mines high up on the coastal range (smaller fields exist at Charleston and near Inangahua). In addition to bituminous, sub-bituminous coal and lignite are produced and, while much of the coal is exploited underground, opencast pits are to be found. This field achieved its greatest level of production about the time of the First World War, since when the production has declined. The State again is the principal employer. The mining settlements are notoriously unattractive and their populations have declined markedly as the miners have been rehoused in the lower and coastal localities. In the Reefton district the State is not such an important employer and the mines tend to be smaller with opencast mining supplying more than a third of the total production. Production has increased continuously since the beginning of the century.

In broad terms the West Coast consists of a narrow strip of land composed mainly of alluvium and glacial deposits brought down by the rivers and glaciers flowing from the Southern Alps. Located on the western side of the main range it has an exceedingly high rainfall, which is well distributed throughout the year. Thus Hokitika has an average annual rainfall of 108·8 in. and the average number of rain days is 194. Nevertheless, sunshine hours are quite high, 1,840, and the range of temperature is low. The mean daily maximum for January is 65·3F and the mean daily minimum for July is 35·6F. The original vegetation was mostly nothofagus (or beech) and podocarp forest, and it remains so over large areas because of the steep terrain. A portion of the forest is still being exploited; the remainder has been converted to farm land, but a considerable area is occupied by scrub and poorly regenerated forest. The land-utilisation survey for 1959 estimated that only 168,800 acres, or 4·4 per cent of the total area, was developed and, of this, 37·6 per cent was under poor grass; 378,600 acres, 9·8 per cent of the total area, was under scrub, whilst 66 per cent was still clothed in native bush and 16·6 per cent consisted of barren mountain tops.

To understand the region one must pass beyond this elementary physical pattern, because in terms both of human and of physical geography the West Coast divides into a northern and southern section, the dividing line being to the south of Hokitika, perhaps near Ross. To the south the physical pattern is, as already described, a narrow coastal plain with the ranges steeply rising above it. There are no settlements of a thousand or more people; a few small villages, such as Harihari (population, 1961, 250), act as centres for the farming population which occupies some of the larger alluvial fans. Sheep, as well as dairy and beef cattle, are run. There is very little sawmilling to the south of Ross, but the tourist, who provides the third source of income, has the opportunity of passing through some large sections of virgin bush. The attraction is always the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers, which descend from the main ranges at altitudes of 10,000 ft to within 700 ft of sea level. Exceptional views occur of glaciers framed by native bush, and from sites nearer to the coast a magnificent panorama is obtained of the glaciers and the principal peaks of the Southern Alps, Mount Tasman (11,475 ft), Cook (12,349 ft), and La Perouse (10,101 ft). These constitute the more public of the scenic attractions; progressively, other attractions are being opened up to a smaller clientele through the use of the aeroplane. With the completion of the Haast Pass road, the greatest detraction to tourism in the region, the necessity of making the long return journey to Hokitika, has been removed and it is now possible to continue the journey through to Central Otago.

The northern section of the West Coast is essentially the work place of the region. It is not without its tourist attractions (the Punakaiki Rocks have a fascination for some), but there is more to engage the attention of the economist, geographer, sociologist, and historian. The simple plan of the physical geography is broken by the Paparoa Range, which stands between the coast and the main range. Composed largely of metamorphic rocks, it attains a height of 4,925 ft in the north and 3,992 ft in the south, and it is here, near the lower reaches of the Grey River, that the range is flanked by coal-bearing early Tertiary rocks. The valley of the Grey and its tributaries creates a large area of lowlying country to the east of the Paparoa Range, which is important for farming and which contains the main road and rail connections between Greymouth and Reefton and via the Buller Gorge, Westport. North of Westport the simple pattern of coastal plain backed by mountains is repeated, but the relief is much lower, between 3,000 to 5,000 ft, and whilst old metamorphic rocks are present, the rocks of the coastal range are largely of Tertiary Age with coal-bearing series exposed close to Denniston, Stockton, and Seddonville. This area is known as the Buller coalfield. To the north lies Karamea (population, 1961, 220), a small centre serving the farming population located on the surrounding alluvial fan. Beyond Karamea the coast is wild, desolate, and uninhabited.