Coal - New Zealand's Black Gold - click to download PDF(187K): download requires Adobe Acrobat

Thousands of years ago, prehistoric man discovered an amazing quality in a black rock - it could burn.

This provided them with warmth and a fuel source for cooking. As human society developed, this black gold called coal was also used to fuel kilns for baking clay pottery.

Fast forward a few thousand years to the mid 1700s, the Industrial Revolution was fuelled on the back of coal. Ironworks required coal, coal gas was used to power street lamps, and some of the most famous inventions in history were coal fuelled.