Denniston mine is 26km North East of Westport and well worth the visit. Ample car parking when you get there. 

Plenty of work has been done on the presentation of this historic site. Great story boards all around explaining the history and processes. 

Take your time to walk some of the short trails as well.

My recommendation is to spend t least 2 or 3 hours hare, and the views from the top of the incline are amazing.  

Take a sandwich and a thermos , because there are no cafe's on site.

An exert from NZ Govt History Website.

They had reason to complain, for Denniston was a miserable hole, a gimcrack clutter of corrugated iron and weatherboard buildings clinging precariously to a bleak plateau. Thick fog could hang around for weeks on end, as could steady drizzle. In between times it bucketed down, yet little grew here apart from rust, emphysema and the politics of dissent. The soil was so thin they had to send bodies down the incline for burial elsewhere.

Denniston (named after R.B. Denniston, the company’s surveyor and colliery manager) was the bleak jewel in the Westport Coal Company’s crown. It was also the country's most productive coalfield. From its offices in Water Street, Dunedin, Westport Coal collaborated with the Union Steam Ship Company to dominate the colony’s fuel and transport industries. Between 1879 and 1967, 13 million tonnes of coal was sent down the incline to Union Steam Ship Company colliers at nearby Westport.

It was a technical triumph. The incline plunged precipitously, 548 m in a distance of just 1670 m, with some grades as steep as 1 in 1.25 (80%). Two water-operated brakes, Upper Brake and Middle Brake, slowed the progress of the counter-balancing wagons (i.e., descending full wagons pulled up empty ones) down the two inclines to the railhead at Conns Creek.