Brunner's Black Gold (Earthcache - West Coast) EarthCache
Brunner's Black Gold (Earthcache - West Coast)
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Coal is a readily combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock normally occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure. Coal is composed primarily of carbon along with variable quantities of other elements, chiefly sulfur, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. (wikipedia).
Coal starts off as vegetation, that has decomposed and oxidised in brackish or acidic water to form peat and then been compressed over a period of millions of years to form lignite and then coal.
New Zealand coals are geologically young - approximately 75 to 45 million years ago. The peat that forms the coal has been buried and then compressed by masses of marine sediment.
The Paparoa and Brunner coal measures (sedimentry rocks containing the coal) lie on top of some of the oldest rocks in New Zealand, dating back 490 years to the ancient super continent, Gondwana.
The peat that formed the Paparoa coal measures was formed in lakes and rivers where as the Brunner coal measures were formed by extensive coastal estuaries. The peat was burried by 4km of sediment for up to 30 million years, before then being uplifted by the fault lines that eventually formed the Paparoa range and the surrounding landscape. Erosion of the surrounding limestone has made the coal seem accessible in this narrow gorge, leading to its discovery and subsequent mining activity.
In order to gain permission to log this earthcache, you need to complete the following activities.
Email the cache owner with answers to the following questions.
1. When was the Brunner coal seam first discovered?
2. What type of rock lies under the Paparoa abd Brunner coal measures?
3. How many people were killed in the Brunner mining disaster?
4. When did the Brunner mining disaster occur?
Take a photo of your GPS at the entrance to the Brunner mine. Upload your photo with your cache log.
All information can be found on the Department Of Conservation signs in the kiosk, not far from the listed co-ordinates. In order to prove that you have visited the site, it is important that you ensure that your answers match those on these information signs.
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