The wonderful West Coast – contribute your photos
Posted 24 September 2008 // Simon Nathan
The Denniston incline – a West Coast icon
With New Zealand’s highest rainfall, the highest mountains, and glaciers extending down to near sea-level, the West Coast has the feel of frontier country, combined with spectacular scenery.
West Coasters have always had a reputation for being independent minded, and suspicious of authority and regulations. Gold mining, coal mining and forestry kept the economy going for many years, but nowadays tourism and farming are major employers. Farmers are belatedly realising that the West Coast’s drought-free qualities make it prime dairying country.
The West Coast features in Peter Hawes’s new play, The gods of warm beer , at Centrepoint theatre in Palmerston North. Two young rugby players are poached by league scouts, and suffer the humiliation of upsetting the whole community. It’s a wonderfully evocative play about life in Westport in 1951. Even if the audience probably didn’t understand some of the subtleties of West Coast life, they loved it.
The West Coast will be the next region to feature in Te Ara’s Places theme, and will be published in December 2008.
If you have photos of the West Coast, we’d love you to contribute them to our Te Ara group on Flickr. We’ll select around 20 images for an online exhibition, like the exhibition in our recent Southland entry. We’re particularly interested in things that are distinctive about the region. Visit our Flickr group for more details.
