As anticipated, the clouds were low and ominous on Tuesday morning (November 24th) so we abandoned the idea of going to Arthur’s Pass. Instead, we took the road to Greymouth via Lake Brunner and the lower end of the Grey River valley. Shortly after turning onto the road overlooking the Grey River, we saw a rest area with a tall brick chimney, a rather unexpected sight in this scenic valley. We pulled in and spent a full hour exploring the Brunner Mine Historic Reserve, slightly surprised that this did not warrant a mention in our Lonely Planet guide.

Unlike the sites of former gold-mines that we had visited the previous day, this had been New Zealand’s most productive coal mine in the 19th century. The coal seam was first noted on the banks of the Grey River by European explorer Thomas Brunner and his Maori guides in 1848. Coal mined from this seam from 1864 into the 1960s, was the key to early industrial and economic development in New Zealand. Coal was discovered throughout the Grey River gorge and the output from this area peaked in the mid-1880 to1890s at just over 1.4 million tons per year, more than 50% of the country’s high-grade bituminous coal.

With the main seam continuing on both sides of the river, after starting the Brunner Mine on the north shore, shafts were also sunk at the Tyneside Mine on the south side (where we had stopped). In 1877, these mines were joined by a suspension bridge and in 2005 this 91 m-long (300 feet), timber-and-cable bridge was renovated and re-opened as a pedestrian bridge for the Historic Reserve. Much of the coal was heated in beehive-shaped, brick ovens to form coke and remains of these ovens were a conspicuous part of the site, along with the many, informative signs. A large memorial statue of a miner with his shovel commemorated, as was almost inevitable, a large coal-dust explosion in 1896, which killed all 65 men and boys working underground.

We found another, more-modern mining memorial (with figures of three short miners surrounded by an intriguing, perpetually turning, vertical, smooth wheel apparently floating in water) on the riverbank walk in Greymouth. After gold was discovered in the area in 1864, 29,000 prospectors made their way to the area, many arriving by ship into Greymouth. Between this influx and the export of coal, Greymouth was one of the busiest ports in New Zealand at that time. Despite all of this mining history, we felt no need to visit “Shantytown”, an interactive museum (theme-park?) which re-creates a 1860s gold-mining town complete with “gory hospital” and “Rosie’s House of Ill Repute”.

In all, we did not stay for long in Greymouth (population 8,900), other than to restock with groceries, admire the beautifully restored train-station (now an i-SITE a.k.a. tourist-information office), and to examine an exhibition of pounamu carvings by local artists. Pounamu is the form of greenstone or jade that is found in southern New Zealand and is highly prized by the Maori, for whom it is considered taonga or treasure. Items made with pounamu included tools and weapons as well as jewelry, and these increase in mana (prestige) as they are passed down through the generations.

Found mostly in rivers inside nondescript boulders that have to be cut open to identify the pounamu, since 1997 all naturally occurring pounamu in New Zealand is owned by the Ngai Tahu (southern Maori tribe). All carvers have to obtain their stone from the tribe and most of the designs used are based on traditional Maori symbols.

Heading north along the coast from Greymouth, our next target was in Paparoa National Park, just short of the village of Punakaiki. A large car-park, café and visitors center on the inland side of the highway was hard to miss and the short trail on the seaward side should not be missed. This well-fenced trail meanders around a series of blowholes within cliffs of pancake rocks. The tide was too low for the blowholes to be sending up significant spouts but the waves were impressive enough as they sloshed in and out of the narrow gullies and under rock arches.

All four of us had imagined that the pancake rocks would be thick layers of circular rocks that were isolated on a sandy beach so that you could walk around them. I don’t know…sort of like stacks of pancakes. Instead, they were cliff faces and isolated stacks of thinly layered limestone rock. The latter, seen from a distance, did not look particularly unusual except where boulders had broken off and the layers had split and tipped-up like an idly dumped pack of playing cards. However, when we reached the cliff-faces that were much closer to the trail, the piles of thin pancakes were much more impressive.

The limestone rock itself was formed by the deposition of shells and skeletons of tiny marine organisms at the bottom of the ocean, 3.5 million years ago. Subsequent covering and crushing by layers of sand and mud eroded from the land, formed the limestone which was eventually lifted up above the sea level and subject to weathering. The unusually thin layers in the limestone are not, however, as easily explained. The process is called stylobedding and it is suggested that when the limestone was first formed the pressure was so immense that some of the grains of shell and skeleton passed into solution. For unknown reasons, some minerals merged to form thin seams of mudstone between the layers of limestone. More rapid weathering of the mudstone over the last 100,000 years has resulted in the distinctive pancake effect.

As if this strange geology were not enough, the rocks were also a nesting area for an abundant native seabird, the white-fronted tern. While the black-capped, white adults with their long forked-tails stood-out dramatically, the coloration of the grey-freckled juveniles allowed them to blend into the grey rocks much more effectively. Informative signs along the trail identified the dense plantations of native cabbage tree, flax, nikau palm (sculptures of which we had seen in Wellington), and keikei (a climbing type of pandanas).

Andrew, Judith, and I completed our visit to Punakaiki by walking down the road to a cavern in which we were invited by a National Park sign to “cave softly”. We used our headlamps to explore the two main rooms of the unlit cavern, finding modest examples of pointed and plate-like stalactites and, when we turned our lights off, we rather smugly identifies the pin-pricks of light from a few overhead glowworms.

Further up the coast at Charleston, we could have taken the whole caving thing to the next level by rafting through caves but it was getting late in the day and the promise of fish and chips and a visit to a pub in Westport (population 5,600) called us on. Andrew and Judith stayed in a rather quaint A-frame cabin in the Westport Holiday Park while curious wekas (those rail-like flightless birds) wandered around the campground and, with their raucous calls, they seemed determined to keep our camping neighbors from sleeping-late the next morning.