Photo recall: A time of innocence as dark clouds loom

Photo / NZ Herald

Wandering barefoot down Main St in the small mining town of Denniston, 10-year-old Hector Beech had no idea of the tragedies that would shape his life in the coming years.

It was 1967 - the year they closed the famous Denniston Incline, the steep railway that had carried 12 million tons of coal down the mountainside to the ships and towns of the West Coast.

Aside from, perhaps, the school teacher, postmaster and publican, pretty much every man in town worked up at the mines, at the top of The Incline.

Schoolboys David Dick, left, and his friend, Hector Beech, would jump on top of the wagons full of coal and ride them down to the bottom - then climb into an empty wagon to ride back up again.

Hector's dad - he was a miner, of course - lost the tip of a finger when he was resting his arm on the cable, just as a wagon came along.

"I'd never work underground in a coal mine," says Hector, now 54. "It's too dangerous."

The year after The Incline closed, the Beech family - mum, dad and eight children - moved to Reefton. They had barely hung the net curtains when the 7.1 magnitude Inangahua earthquake struck.

Hector Beech now lives in the earthquake-devastated Christchurch suburb of Avonside - but he still remembers that 1968 quake as his worst. "The roads were split open, everything came out of the cupboards, the hotwater cylinder blew up," he recalls. "It was worse than what this year's quake did to my house.

"There was a house up on the hill. A big boulder came rolling down and landed on the house. The woman there is buried under the boulder to this day. Apparently her husband crawled six miles (9.6km) with two broken legs to get help for her - but there was nothing they could do."

Hector speaks prosaically of the life of a West Coast mining family. He remembers when the neighbour's house burned down, claiming the life of one person inside and the little dog that tried to alert its owners.

One of his younger brothers, Anthony, died when he was just 24, asphyxiated in an accident.

And little Raymond - the blond curly-haired boy on the right of the photo - died just six years ago when his truck rolled on top of him on his farm. The Pike River coal mine tragedy claimed some of Hector's old friends and relatives.

By then, most of the surviving siblings were living in Christchurch, so often the way for Coasters.

But the other brother in the photo, Micky, moved back to a small block near Ross, farming a few sheep and cattle, catching whitebait in season and panning for gold.

Micky's not on the phone - but Hector visited him two months ago.

"It was the first time I'd been back to the Coast in 20-odd years."

Hector pauses. "It brings back a lot of memories."

Photo researcher: Emma Walter