November 14, 2017 - Greymouth, New Zealand

Today was a day of several hikes, and a little history.  Our first stop today was at a historic site called Brunner Mine Site.  It is on the Greymouth River and there are several old buildings, plus a long suspension bridge over the river.  They had a very nice walk through the relics with signs describing what you were looking at.  There was an explosion and cave-in at this mine back in 1896 that killed 65 miners.  It was the worst mining accident in New Zealand's history.  This mine was primarily extracting fire-clay that was used to make bricks.  New Zealand had quite a gold rush in the 1800's and there were a lot of mines over the years, so this was a significant accident.

Our rental car in a parking lot for a cave.  The cave was muddy and slick, plus
we saw a big spider, so we didn't go very far inside.

Another funky van.....

A statue at the Brenner Mine Site. 

The Brenner Mine Site

The back side of the kilns where they fired the bricks.  This was from the 1880's

The front side of one of the kilns

Next up was a hike to a beautiful waterfall at Coal Creek.  It was a very easy walk that ended at a nice waterfall.

The very pretty waterfall at Coal Creek

A huge tree at Coal Creek Falls

We then went to Woods Creek which has a really interesting trail that leads you to multiple old mine shafts.  Once again my pocket flashlight proved indispensable.  That shafts were very long and branched off in a few places.  We went about as far back as you could in the shafts that were accessible.  There were other shafts there, but they were closed off or had too much standing water for us to proceed.

Looking back at the entrance to the mine shaft.

A narrow passage through a hillside. 

The other end of that passage way

Cindy checks out the rock formation.  I think they already
got the gold out of this one.

Another suspension bridge.  These are quite popular in
New Zealand.

And finally, we finished up our day stopping at a playground, and then walked on the beach behind our hotel.  We found tons of smooth white rocks and spent quite a while looking for the purest, smoothest ones.  We have a bog of rocks to bring home with us.  I hope my bag doesn't exceed the weight limit at the airport!

Looking for brilliant white rocks on the beach

Sunset on the beach.