Taramakau River

 

Last week B and I drove out to Dillmanstown which is a former mining settlement out Kumara way, about 20 minutes drive from Greymouth. We have many many bridges like this one around the country that only have one lane, mostly because they aren't a high traffic area.

This one the "William Stewart" bridge was opened 11th April 1991 by the then Minister of Works and Development and Chairman of the National Roads Board the Hon. W.L. Young M.P.

On one side of the bridge was a small gravel road leading down to the Taramakau River where I saw a car. The 2 men were either doing a spot of fishing or having a look around for rocks.

And on the other side was the Kumara Power Station, quite small compared to others I've seen but no doubt it does a decent job of providing electricity to the surrounding areas.

This is the Taramakau River. It runs for 75kms to the Tasman Sea and is the boundary between the Westland and Greymouth districts.

Linking up with Through my lens, Tuesday Treasures, My corner of the world and Wordless Wednesday.

Kumara's main street

A nearby town to Greymouth is this one, Kumara (not the vegetable we have here and it's pronounced differently) was once a booming gold town, part of the mining era of the 1800s. These days it's a shadow of it's former self. I think from memory it has a pub, a petrol station and some streets with houses. The town got it's name from a surveyor in that area named Arthur Dobson (Dobson is also a suburb in Greymouth) after a change of Kohimara which is the Maori word for the white flowers of the bush that grow along the river.

Once upon a time, in this photo from between 1870-1879 there were once 27 hotels in the main street. In 1876 gold was found in glacial gravel so hydraulic sluicing was the only feasible way to recover it. Over a 20 year period large water races and sludge tunnels were created and most of the land behind the town was sluiced into the nearby Taramakau River. The mining eventually eased off in the late 1890s but dredging carried on until the 1960s.

Some information taken from West Coast History. 

Linking up with Blue Monday and Mosaic Monday.