“One evening I watched the sun set over Reefton after an unusually fine and bright winter's day. The chill fell like a blanket, and with it came the sharp tang of coal smoke, shovelled into a hundred fires — or more — in houses around the town. It was a smell to conjure with, carrying all the sense of days gone by: of times when hissing steam locomotives drew cargoes around New Zealand with enthusiastic verve, of times when great cylindrical gasometers dominated townscapes from Kaitaia to Bluff, of an age when glowing embers whispering in iron stoves kept the chill at bay.”
―
Matthew Wright,
Coal: The Rise and Fall of King Coal in New Zealand
