Smoko: Literal connections bind to unfolding Pike River mine tragedy

There is a little bit of West Coaster in all of us. So remarked Paul Holmes on Sunday morning during an interview with Greymouth Mayor Tony Kokshoorn. He was, of course, alluding to the way in which the unfolding tragedy at the Pike River Coal mine touches us all.

Scratch the surface and it doesn't take long to come up with a more literal connection, or two. After all, in the gold rush days of the mid to late 19th century the West Coast was easily the most populous area of the country. And when the gold ran out, the prospectors moved on and spread out, leaving behind the miners who dug for a different dividend.

My family is no exception, something I've had cause to reflect upon over the past several nights on duty after wading through the acres of reports emerging from the area, selecting, cutting and pasting, trimming, grappling - along with colleagues - as to how best to present this by-now ominous event.

The year my father left the Coast and went north, having reluctantly come to the conclusion that the 27 cows he milked on our waterlogged patch of pakihi would not support his growing family, we moved from the old farmhouse into my grandfather's place in town - from damp shadows in the lee of the northern Papahaua ranges and the old Denniston mine, to the jaded grid-like arrangement of Westport's streets, their name tags, like archeological artefacts, revealing the municipality's cultural and historical pedigree: Palmerston, Brougham, Wakefield, Romily, Queen, Peel ...

Before he left we were given stern instructions to help our mother: my chores included chopping the kindling - which in itself made a tomahawk-wielding 6-year-old feel mightily grown up - and filling the scuttle from the coal bin outside with gleaming lumps of the stuff, mined somewhere in the hills behind the town.

It was a task I revelled in, fascinated by the shiny but softish black rock and the heat it exuded as the fire in the living room began to crackle and glow.

From an early age I had a relationship with coal. My late mother used to delight in telling how, as a toddler, I would eat the stuff; what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, I suppose.

At Westport North, where I began my primary education, my best mate was the son of a coalminer. And I recall the odd trip up the winding incline to Denniston, even in the late '50s well past its prime.

But perhaps, after all, something of it was in the blood.

The Cunliffes emigrated from Lancashire in the 1870s. They were engineers, smithies, railway men, miners. They came from large families, my great-great-grandfather one of 13, I believe. He married Phoebe, sister of Richard John Seddon, the rough diamond of a premier who cut his colonial teeth in the goldfields of the small West Coast settlement of Kumara.

My paternal grandparents were married in Greymouth; my maternal grandfather was born in Cobden on the other side of the Grey River. He ended up a merchant in Westport, an entrepreneurial spirit who'd take a weekly trip up to the mines, his car boot laden with the latest electrical equipment, portable radios and the like.

A namesake, W. Cunliffe, pony driver, died in the Brunner mine disaster of 1896, along with 65 others. Located about 20km away from the Pike River mine, it too involved an explosion. It is possible he was a distant relative but, to date, the family archives are silent on this.

In any case, he was among the mine workers who, at 9.30am on March 26 of that year, were hit by an explosion of "firedamp" - an ignited pocket of methane gas, a common hazard in coal mines - which left many of them dead, and others to suffocate on the "afterdamp", the lethal mixture of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide produced in its wake.

Rescuers, determined to retrieve their workmates, or at worst their bodies, were often overcome by the noxious gases and had to be carried back out to the surface themselves.

Despite the terrible tragedy and the extent to which it touched the lives of so many in the area, it also helped forge a new identity from among the disparate immigrant groups who worked the mines.

They became West Coasters. That identity, that spirit of solidarity and kinship endures. It has been evident over the past days as the community struggles to come to terms with this disaster.

Increasingly unable to hope, but as yet unable to grieve, relatives, lovers, colleagues and friends are locked into a nightmarish limbo. The likelihood of a satisfactory resolution recedes by the hour. We can only hope and pray for a swift deliverance.

-Simon Cunliffe is assistant editor at the Otago Daily Times. 

 

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