Coal seam at Mōkihinui

This huge coal seam, about 11-m thick, occurs in Coal (Parenga) Creek near Seddonville, and was the site of one of the area's earliest coal mines. A shaft has been driven into the lower part of the seam. British coal miners were used to working seams only 2- or 3-m thick, and their traditional mining techniques left much of the coal in the ground. Later generations of miners came back to try and recover some of this unmined coal.