Mining centres live and die on booms and busts, and Reefton is set to boom again. After years of deliberations the government has approved a scaled-down version of a proposal to reopen the historic Globe Progress gold mine in the hills above the town.

Image courtesy of Ian Trafford

The new Globe Progress will be active for 7 to 15 years, and it ensures Reefton's short-term future. While debate over the mine has grabbed headlines, a group of Reeftonites is quietly looking to another historic resource to avoid a long-term bust - heritage buildings and the culture of the past.

Reefton was born in the quartz mining mania of the 1870s, and its landmark buildings date from that era. Made from local timber with roofs and often sidewalls of corrugated iron, they were built sturdy but not to last forever. By the 1990s many had become dilapidated, and most townspeople felt they should give way to more modern structures.

The members of the Reefton Historic Trust Board think otherwise. Over the past five years the group has sought to maintain the historic feel of Reefton and preserve buildings under immediate threat. As a result the trust now owns or leases four of the town's prominent structures: the Oddfellows Hall, courthouse, railway station and steam engine shed.

Chairperson Paul Thomas says the Reefton Historic Trust Board was formed in 1979 when a proposal was floated to shift Reefton's disused courthouse to Shantytown, a made-for-tourists gold mining village near Greymouth. The Reefton partisans were able to block the move.

"By 1996 the trust had just half a dozen members and was almost in recess. Then Tranzrail put its old steam engine shed up for sale. The trust persuaded Tranzrail to take it off the market. We leased it from them and once we started to renovate it with a $52,000 grant from the Lottery Board, our numbers grew. We have about 40 members.

"Two years ago we bought the railway station itself, which was built in 1892 for the Midland Railway Company. We were aware that Crown land was to be sold through Ngai Tahu, so we approached the local runanga, Katiwaewae. They agreed to the sale and we were able to buy it along with several hectares of adjacent land".

There is a subgroup within the Reefton Historic Trust Board that is primarily interested in railways. The two rail buildings on Reefton's outskirts are part of its ultimate aim - a passenger steam engine travelling between Greymouth and Westport. It even has plans to salvage one of three steam engines dumped in the Grey River to shore up a riverbank near Greymouth.

Back in town the courthouse and Oddfellows hall sit just down the road from each other on Bridge Street. Since the trust bought it, the Oddfellows hall has gained new piles, new weatherboard, and a new roof. A party of Taskforce Green workers repainted it last year. Now it is the courthouse's turn.

Though the trust board holds monthly working bees, professional builders do the core restorations. The trust has cast a wide net to come up with funds to do the work. National bodies such as the Lottery Board, NZ Historic Places Trust, and the Lion Foundation have contributed, as have the Buller District Council, West Coast Community Trust, Grey Valley Lions, and Reefton Hardware.

When Thomas began to work with the trust board he was the Department of Conservation's field centre manager for the Reefton region. He has since left DoC but continues to carry out heritage and tourism on the West Coast and other parts of the country.

Growing up in Christchurch, Thomas hung around the railway workshop at Ferrymead Heritage Park. He came to the West Coast with his wife Betty and two daughters (they now have a third) after a two year stint with DoC looking after Sir George Grey's residence on Kawau Island in the Hauraki Gulf.

"Reefton is a wonderful time capsule. Though it has lost some of its built history, it still has enough elements to portray what the West Coast gold mining era of the 1870s was like. It is something to be cherished because as the other centres on the West Coast develop, they are losing that heritage.

"In Reefton it is possible go back in time but live in the present. Tour buses are starting to visit us now so our heritage is of economic significance. Diversity is important. We need the mining, the saw milling, and the dairy farming to sustain us. It's nice think that heritage can add to that as well as give the town colour and vibrancy."

The trust has not always been popular in Reefton. Some felt it stood in the way of upgrading the town's image. Now opinion has come around, and others have got on board. Last year a Reefton promotion group started the ambitious project of restoring the 1888 hydraulic powerhouse that gave Reefton the right to claim it was the first town in the southern hemisphere to have electric street lights.