New Zealand, Aotearoa
Land of the Long White Cloud

New Zealand's Coast line can be rugged and wild. Cape Foulwind, Buller New Zealand.

From the sun-tropical farthest north to the bleak farthest south, from the coast to the summit of the highest peaks, New Zealand is a diversity of some of the worlds finest landscape regions.

Much of the country remains untamed and uninhabited. A land where 20 mountain peaks soar to over 3000m among ranges that seemingly rise from the sea.

Beaches of golden sand stretch endlessly away to the horizon, while in other places ruggered beaches of shingle and rock outcrops or towering cliffs are battered by huge waves. Yet no place within New Zealand is more than 110km away from those mountainous regions and soaring peaks.

 

Many West Coast roads pass through rain forest festooned with dripping wet moss.

The vegetation is more diverse than the land. From desert regions to rain forest festooned with dripping wet moss. Where ancient trees of enormous height and girth still tower above all others. To alpine slopes where tiny plants survive freezing cold and biting winds.

All these are but a few aspects of the rugged, wild natural beauty that makes up New Zealands landscape from the northern tip of the North Island to the southern tip of Stewart Island.

Some of these places are well known world wide, while many others are hardly known at all, even by those who live here. It is the later that truely makes any visit to Aotearoa, New Zealand a memorable experience. A unique experience that can often be repeated through return visits.

A land Far Away ...

The story of New Zealand may have hardly begun when compared to many other nations of the world. But time is not the issue it is the distance. That vast expanse of ocean that gives New Zealand it's unique space, landscape, native forests and birdlife also gives distance from the world's great continents, markets and cultures.

New Zealand's Southern Alps, seen from the West Coast. Whataroa River, Westland, New Zealand.

This distance meant that New Zealand's 27 million hectares were slow to be claimed by man: in fact they were the last major vacant land mass before the arrival of the first Polynesian people.

Because New Zealand was the last to come under the influence of mankind and is the youngest nation geologically on the earth, visitors may be tempted to imagine the nation as a land innocent of history: that thought would however be wrong.

That distance meant the ancestors of modern Maori, eventually lost contact with their homelands and in isolation developed one of the Pacific's most distinctive cultures. The culture and people that sprang from the first Polynesian settlers were strong enough to withstand the arrival of European Settlers and the disease, and deadly musket that preceeded the plough.

The foothills and mountain regions are littered with streaks of erosion. Lake Pearson, Canterbury, Southern Alps.

For European settlers distance was also an issue, measured in miles or kilometers to their homelands, rather than ancestral time. While the nearest land mass of any size, Australia is 1600 kms west across the stormy Tasman Sea.

Today the ruthless past and efficient present distinguish the landscape of New Zealand. The narrow hill country and mountain regions are littered with streaks of erosion and speckled with returning growth, that remain as testament to the previous harvest of tall native timbers and delusive fertility left by the ash of many bush fires. A testament to the failure of man to understand or respect the world around him.

This however, is not to say that all of New Zealand's land has been under the foot of man. Often man has only pushed to the edge of the native wilderness. These lands are today most often set aside for recreational use in the form of National Parks, Forest Parks and other conservation estates.