BIRTH AND EARLY DEVELOPMENT
West Coast was, for years, the lowest in the world.” Coal was plentiful about Charleston, a brown lignitic coal, different from the celebrated bituminous coal of Westport that assisted in saving H.M.S. Calliope during the hurricane at Apia, Samoa, in 1889. The seams lay close to the surface, so there were no mines or underground workings, but only open-face pits. Probably the first seam to be worked was one in the vicinity of Rotten Row, then called Coal Street. Others were Harry Mann’s, behind the Phoenix Brewery, below the hospital, in Darkie’s Terrace Road, later owned but abandoned by Pat Connor, who opened a second pit some chains away, and Tom Powell’s behind the school reserve. The latter was still being worked in 1940. The price of coal was 10/- per ton delivered, and as firewood was cheap the townspeople were well provided with fuel. At different times efforts were made to establish an export trade in coal, but the absence of a suitable port, and competition with the superior coal of Westport, were insuperable obstacles. A proposal in 1920, to build a railway or tramway to Cape Foulwind to link up with the railway there, did not meet with sufficient support. It was estimated that eight million tons of coal were available at Charleston, and that the depths of the deposits were about twenty-nine feet. The existence of seams of lignite near to the Nile River was reported on by Heaphy and Brunner in 1847, and by John Rochfort in 1859.
A pressing early need was for timber for mining and building purposes. For mining requirements it was usually obtained by felling and pit-sawing close to where required, but most of the building timber was milled.
In February of 1868 the Nile Steam Sawmill, on a site behind the Nile Hotel, was established by Mr. Charles Nees. This and Nees’s battery (later used as a sawmill by Jock Mitchell) were soon afterwards sold at auction to Philip Rooney for £310. It was acquired by James Hennelly during the same year, and later by Messrs. Beckle and Marris, and later still by Messrs. W. and J. Marris. A wooden-railed tramway, acquired from Nees, brought logs from the timbered land along the south side of the Nile, about Darkie’s Creek, and around the area behind the Camp Reserve.
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