Worlds first inner-city pest-free environment

Visit the worlds first inner city pest-free environment

In a hidden, almost secret valley, kiwis are breeding only 3 kilometres from parliament – in the heart of our Capital city, a slice of New Zealand is reverting to its former glory with the help of a predator-free-mainland-island.

When early settlers wrote about this area they reported rich and diverse forests filled with deafening bird-song. Here, in one of Wellingtons best kept stories, a group of people, with a five hundred year vision, are restoring the area to that same condition.

I have taken a ten minute bus ride, and now, after checking my bag for mice or other predators, step through a gate in the 2.3 metre predator-proof fence and into the 252-hectare valley.

Katie and Allison, two of the volunteers guides, are taking a small group on a nocturnal tour.

“This is a listening tour” they tell us. “You  can except to hear various night birds but not see them” and so begins our walk on what they have dscdribed  as ‘a work in progress.’

The night-sky is clear and we’ve been given a torch.

‘Only use it to see the path when you need to’ says Allison ‘and make sure you have your fingers over the light to make sure we don’t disturb anything’

Karori, Wellington, NZ

Our eyes grow accustomed to the dimming half light and off we go, Katie giving us information in response to our questions.

The two reservoirs originally supplied Wellingtons residents with water and were decommissioned in the mid-nineties. There are around 10 paid staff and some 400 volunteers and the only visitor entry to the sanctuary is via the visitor centre at the end of Waiapu  Road. (on the left as you come through the Karori Tunnel

We walk, dusk turns into night, a large group of black shag are roosting on a dead pine tree and when we stop at the upper dam we hear our first kiwi. The call carries across the valley and a shiver-thrill ripples through my body. How amazing that this wonderful bird is safe and breeding so close to human activity. Standing on the dam, built in1908, now a  tree-top canopy walk, more birds call, we hear about five different kiwi and a couple of weka. Kiwi were released, over two years, in the valley ( from Kapiti Island) and the numbers have increased naturally since then.

On our walk back down the other-side of the dam we see glow-worms. I feel quite disoriented by them. They are so bright in the dark night and look like the lights of a distant city. Passing back through the weka fence (weka sometimes eat kiwi eggs) we stop to listen as another kiwi calls. Most human kiwi never get to hear this sound and I feel lucky to be hearing so many here on this city ‘island’.

“That’s Jackson” said our guide.

The most famous one-legged kiwi in the world!

“Send yourself to Wellington’ the advert said, so I have. The weather’s wonderful, the food fantastic and the atmosphere alluring; what more could you want?

A day at Te Papa is a must: after some twenty visits there I still find plenty of new things to tempt me. The virtual bungee made me scream – I could not convince my brain I was not teetering on the brink of a platform, tied to a rubber band and planning to jump into thin air, many, many metres above a river.

Naturally, the theatre is a must too and Downstage and Circa always have a production well-worth seeing: as a passionate nomad, travelling alone, I often get the very last seat so suggest you always try to see some local theatre wherever you are.  The vibrant waterfront, the City Gallery and other art spaces around this vibrant city are also ‘must-do’ activities.

But enough of the arts, how about getting out in the fresh air – and sometimes the term takes on a whole new meaning in this city of dramatic weather: although its often called ‘windy Wellington’ I like the other saying – ‘you can’t beat Wellington in a good day.’  This is so true and I’ve found it has many, many ‘good days’. Today, we are off to the zoo!

A distinctly NZ sign for the toilet

“We’re going to the zoo, zoo, zoo, how about you, you, you, we’re going to the zoo” I sing (not melodiously I must confess) and, recalling childhood songs, my adult children join in while my ten-year-old grandson raises his eyebrows!

My first visit to a zoo was as a preschooler and where a hippo impressed me greatly – no wonder I loved them on later travels – and still today I have that frisson of excitement about seeing animals, both native and exotic, up close.

Wellington Zoo say they are ‘the best little zoo in the world” and is open every day except Christmas Day: New Zealand’s first Zoo, it was established in 1906 and the gift of a young lion – called  “King Dick”  after Prime Minister Richard Seddon –  was officially the Zoo’s first animal and by 1912 it housed over 500 animals.

people start to gather for close encounters

The zoos history shows it has had many interesting and quirky characters including: Percy the pelican came to the Zoo in 1919 and made it into the Guinness book of records as one of the longest living birds in the world, making it to 62 years old; a grey gibbon named Nippy was the Zoo’s longest serving resident, and the oldest gibbon in the world; and in 1999, the Zoo was home to a cheeky little otter named Clyde. Clyde was very good at escaping and one day decided he would leave the Zoo and explore the nearby suburb of Newtown. He was later moved to a secure enclosure at Mogo Zoo in Australia.

turf flys towards me and my camera

No-one escaped the day we were there but we did see an otter playing with a coin that some stupid person had dangerously thrown into the enclosure (naturally we reported it to a keeper)

Our highlights included (but not only!) the noisy, augmentative, chimpanzees – including one who delighted in throwing clumps of turf at us!

We also loved Tahi, a kiwi that had been injured in a gin trap.

Although treated at the Whangarei Bird Recovery Centre and Massey University Wildlife Ward he eventually had to have his leg amputated: after his leg healed, and with his chances of survival in the wild being zero, he went to live at Wellington Zoo as an advocate for his species.

The zoo investigated having a prosthetic leg made for him and Weta Workshop (of Lord of the Rings fame)  along with the New Zealand Artificial Limb Centre made him a prosthesis – he learnt to walk with it but it soon became apparent to his keepers that he was more comfortable without it.
Now, Tahi is the most famous one-legged kiwi in the world, he has had a book written about him (Tahi: One Lucky Kiwi) and he has appeared on television and in magazines all over the world.

African dog

Wellington Zoo has around 500 animals comprising over 100 species: and to be able to see the city right on the doorstep is one of its charms – I would love to live nearby and hear the animals and birds roaring, calling, tweeting. (you can have zoo sleepovers and really be part of the zoo!)

Some of the residents are critically endangered – Sumatran tigers or Campbell Island teals – and others are unique in New Zealand to Wellington Zoo (the Malayan sun bears and White cheeked gibbons).

We were able to get up-close to big cats and giraffes as part of a Close Encounter, and learnt about favourite animals at one of our daily talks. Having been fortunate enough to have seen them in the wild, I especially loved watching the endangered African dogs tearing their food apart.

For visitors to Wellington: the zoo is easy to get to on bus routes #10 and #23

More info here and here

NZs paradise shelduck was called the painted duck by Cook

I saw my first Paradise ducklings of the season over this past weekend … these birds are unusual in they sometimes nest in trees, some 10 – 15 metres above the ground.

They are also the only birds in New Zealand who have increased in numbers since Cook arrived in NZ: he named them the painted duck.

female on Avon river

male paradise -- they pair for life

See other blogs I have written about NZs flightless birds and this website http://www.nzbirds.com/index2.html for more information.

Farewell Spit – the north of the south

Farewell Spit Eco Tours: South Island, New Zealand

I join Farewell Spit Eco Tours on the last day before the time of the tides prevents vehicles travelling on the spit for a few days every so often. (Check http://www.farewellspit.com/ for dates and bookings – AND tell them I recommended them to you!) Above photo courtesy of Farewell Spit eco tours.

My driver-guide, Elaine, is in her fourth summer and says it’s the best job in the world and she is driving Lily. “In front of you are handles. These are for you to grab during the bumpy bits when we go off road” she tells us as we get our safety instructions, then off we go.

We have 24 kms to the start of the spit and 15 one-way bridges to cross.

Originally called Te Onetahua, meaning heaped up sand the long sandbar stretches out 35 km and Paddy Gillooly, manager of The Original Farewell Spit Safari, has a family history with it as old as Collingwood. He prides himself that his hand-picked guides know what they are talking about, that they give accurate information and can’t just be a bus driver. They also have to have great people skills and must constantly read the beach, watching for quicksand.

First called Murderers Bay by Abel Tasman in 1642, when James Cook came he called it Massacre Bay and the early settlers first called it Coal Bay. It was then re-named in 1850s when alluvial gold was discovered in the Aorere River, giving the area its current name  Golden Bay: much more melodious and welcoming.

Growing out of a service delivery, taking fuel, food and school lessons to the light housekeepers and their families, carrying passengers began so they too could enjoy the landscape and see the wading birds. It’s from those beginnings the trip I’m on began.

I had not expected the pools of water all over the bay which replace the long wide beach I had expected  - no wonder wading birds love it here, and the cockles grow so well, I’d had forgotten it’s a mudflat not a beach.

The tides rise and fall fast. “At about walking pace” I’m told: “not at the speed of a galloping horse” that the Nelson artist, Anna Leary, had been told as a young girl  - a dramatic picture that has always stayed with her.

Whale strandings happen in Golden Bay too. It is particularly notorious for pilot whale strandings and during the 1990s there was often one every summer and is why some whale experts call these months ‘the silly season.’
Over the years more than half were refloated, but several hundred have died and been buried on the beaches where they died. The most recent major standing was in December 2005 when 123 whales beached at Puponga and after a massive rescue operation, were refloated.

After visiting the northern-most point of the South Island, Cape Farewell, a bold cliff top which provides a spectacular view of the wild Tasman Sea, we head for the spit, passing “the oldest resident in Puponga” on the way: a face in the craggy rocks.

Through the locked gate we drive, from here, the public may only walk. Down the beach we drive, seeing a few spoonbills and black-billed gulls and many black swans feeding, reminding me I am too early for the godwits which arrive in the thousands from Alaska and resolve to return when I can join a bird watching tour with this company. Wading birds abound from September to April, with February and early March being the ultimate time. With so many seasonal feathered visitors, its no wonder this area has been named a sanctuary, a wetland of international importance.
Driving over the spit to the northern face of Farewell Spit I now see the huge sand beach I was expecting on the bay side. It’s impressive.

The spit could be likened to an iceberg “up to 250 metres deep” our guide tells us, “and growing in length at 4-metres annually. The sand dunes further along the spit are up to 25 metres high. This makes about 3.4 million cubic metres of sand.”  I later find it has been growing for some 6,500 years and settlers have visited the area since the 1870s.
At our first stop at Fossil Point I pick up 3 plastic bottles which have washed up on this pristine area and search for fossils: we find a few in the rocks and I watch some Caspian terns swooping and diving into the sea. There are also some black oystercatchers with their distinct red legs and bills and shrill calls warning me against coming too close! Despite the name, here they dine on tuatua (a shellfish which we Kiwi love to eat too).

Down the beach we drive and I gloat as we pass the post – 2 km down the beach and 4 km from the locked gate –  as this is as far as people can walk, while we continue for another 22 km to the lighthouse.

The wind is picking up the loose sand making the dunes look like the waves beside them: the Nor-wester is the prevailing wind and it is windy 70% of the time, an essential element in forming the spit and consequently Golden Bay.

“How good is this?” asks Elaine “No roads, no signage. So no advertising and no traffic so just sit back and take in the awesome picture of nature undisturbed.” And undisturbed it is.

She has already told me it’s been about 18 months since she got stuck in the sand although in her first year it happened regularly. Her male colleagues kept telling her they would paint her shovel pink.

They had also told her “You are only really stuck if you can’t dig yourself out. If you have dug yourself out you weren’t really stuck!”

“There are probably photos of me on the end of a shovel all over the world” she laughs.

We eventually arrive at the lighthouse which has its power line buried the length of the spit although I think the lighthouse itself is solar powered and the light rotates every 15 seconds.

As a result of many shipwrecks, the first lighthouse was commissioned in 1870, a wooden structure that had to be replaced in 1897 with a steel one. Automated in 1984, this lighthouse is also depicted in a 1969 stamp series of light houses: The Farewell Spit stamp was valued at 10 cents.

After afternoon tea in one of the lighthouse keepers old houses, I climb to the second level until my fear of heights beats me and I retreat and go to look at the Pouwhenua which depicts my favourite, pacific-wide, mythical person: the mischievous Maui Tikitiki a Taranga who is credited with fishing up the North Island while standing in his canoe, the South Island.

According to the notice beside this carving by locals, “as Maui pulled on his line, his feet were dragged along the land, pushing sand in to the dune formations which form Farewell Spit.”

red rocks, seals and a maori myth

Blue skies and a group of Australians were my companions when I joined the Red Rock Seal Tour in Wellington.

Leaving from the tourist information centre twice daily there is plenty to see on these tours including landmarks, seals and great views.

We wind our way through the Wellington (capital of New Zealand)  streets and within ten minutes we are having a wildlife experience on Wellingtons doorstep- this amazed the Aussies who expressed surprise that Wellington didn’t sprawl on for suburb after suburb until our tour-guide explained to how Wellington is constrained by the harbour.

On we went around the south coast of the North Island, through a disused quarry, past the flowering gorse-covered hills, on past the occasional fisher, scuba-divers and walkers and finally reach the red rocks.

Science is not at all romantic and says the rocks are about 210 million years old and are made of iron oxide.

Legends are much more colourful. However they are also less definite and I was given one version to explain the rocks by John, another by an ex- Wellington resident, and the book The Great Harbour of Tara by G. Leslie Adkin gave me two more.

Legend 1 says it is the blood from Maui who used his own blood to bait the fish-hook when he caught the North Island (Te Ika a Maui)  During a phone call from London I was told “ No. It’s the blood from a high born young woman who threw herself off the cliffs because she couldn’t marry the man she loved as he was a commoner.”

Confused I went to the library and found these explanations. Pari whero (red cliffs) is where Kupe had his hand clamped by a live paua and it was his blood from that injury that stained the rocks. Story number four says it’s the blood from the two daughters of Kupe who gashed themselves in grief at their fathers long absence.

rock pools are always interesting to me

Which ever version is correct, the rocks are dramatic because of the small area they are confined to and their very different colour. Other interesting rocks in the area are the ‘pillow rocks’ which have been thrown up by an undersea volcano and the pushed-up-and-twisted rocks that have been formed by earthquakes around the Wellington region.

Also in this area are small caves where adzes and stone chisels have been found many years ago- before the base of the cliffs were covered. This whole area was raised up by a large earthquake in1855.

Continuing along the rocky coastline in the four-wheel-drive Landcruiser we start to see the NZ fur seals (kekeno) who hang out here in a bachelor-pad non-breeding colony – they leave their harem behind in the South Island to rear the young.

Some stay all year but most just winter over on this coast – so this tour continues all year.

Onto the main seal group we go, up a steep climb, through the Devils Gate then stop to admire the great pointy-snouted, small-eared mammals and have a cup of tea or coffee.

inter island ferry on horizion

New Zealand fur seals love relaxing and mostly they ignored our photography session. Because they reach weights of some 200kgs and 1.8 metres in length I resisted the urge to pat their incredibly soft-looking fur which is grey-brown in colour, long and fine on top and very thick under-fur.

The trip is circular and after we leave the coastline and the view of the leaning light-house, we climb up the steep hill where we are told “we get a bit of a lean on here, but we should be right”. Most of us wimps preferred not to look too closely at the steep drop!

This part of the journey is via a private road that follows along the Wellington fault-line. From there we go past the Hawkins Hill radar station, which has a radius of about 400 kilometres, and looks like an ominous giant puffball from a distance. Not long after that we stop at the Wellington wind turbine generator for an impressive 360 degree view of Wellington and its environs before heading back to the city.

This trip was a great break from the city yet did not take all day to travel and left me free to visit Parliment gardens and buildings in the afternoon. Wellington is a wonderfully compact city and if you book ahead you too can ‘send yourself’ to our capital city for a reasonable cost.

bells peel out in new zealand to welcome a bird back

The very first feathered signs of spring arriving in my city have landed.

The Anglican Cathedral bells ring to welcome the  Eastern bar-tailed godwits as they arrive back in Christchurch ( New Zealand) from Alaska.

This annual, non stop epic journey of some 80 thousand godwits migrating back to their breeding grounds here – from the Alaska Arctic Tundra – are warmly welcomed by the ringing of the bells ( hand bell ringers too). This journey of 11,500 kms is usually flown non-stop and usually takes about six days!

Every year we locals farewell them from our shores and when they return the catherdral bells peel out to welcome them back to their summer feeding grounds here on the Ihutai/Avon- Heathcote estuary such a short distance the centre of our city.

godwits coming in to roost beside the black and white oyster catchers

Southern Alps of New Zealand – Arthur’s Pass

Southern Alps Magical National Park.

It takes me less than three hours to travel from plains to mountains; sea to snow-fed rivers; city to village; from current time to the ancient forests of Gondwanaland. (The Jurassic period super-continent from which New Zealand separated some 85 million years ago.)

Unlike the pre-European Maori who walked or early settlers in Cobb and Co. coaches, I travelled by the TranzAlpine train to Arthur’s Pass -the train that leaves Christchurch daily for the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island.

Sharing the carriage were tourists from many parts of the world. Some were ready to test their stamina and muscles in the Arthur’s Pass National Park, while a family group were day-tripping, with five hours to explore the village, and me, looking for some rest and recreation.

Two popular walks near the village are The Devil’s Punchbowl and the Bridal Veil Falls.

The Devil’s Punchbowl waterfall with its impressive 131-metre drop is an easy one-hour return journey through stands of majestic white-limbed mountain beech trees. As you approach the waterfall, clouds of spray rise like mist, just as one might imagine the devil’s steaming cauldron does.

The other easy, yet even more beautiful walk, takes you to the Bridal Veil Falls. Although the falls are viewed from a distance, the walk itself is wonderful. Colours abound; crisp greys to soft emerald, or lime greens nestle alongside bright reds and orange. Numerous native ferns, lichens, trees, and shrubs seem to invite one to stop, admire, and record their beauty, while the piwakawaka (fantail) that accompany you are an absolute joy.

All through the village, population 55, and surrounding areas, are the sounds of birds. Bellbirds with their dulcet tones are so different to the kea with its loud calls as it glides loftily above all, displaying its orange under-wing plumage to us. The occasional gull calls from overhead too, reminding me what a narrow land New Zealand is.

Walking beside beech trees it is easy to believe that the forests of Gondwanaland looked just like these South Island beech forests. Fossils of beech found in Antarctica and descendants that survive in Chile, Australia and Papua New Guinea support this theory.

Brothers Arthur and Edward Dobson rediscovered the pass in 1864. Maori had used it as an east-west route to collect or trade Pounamu, the greenstone from which the south island is named, Te Wai Pounamu. The brothers named it Bealey Flat and finding the route made it easier to travel from coast to coast.

Some sixty years later travel became even easier with the railway and Otira tunnel, signalling the end of the coach era. Tunnellers huts, from early 1900’s, remain in the village linking past to the present. Originally unlined, austere dwellings, they were sold on the tunnel’s completion in 1923.

Some of the pioneering characters of Arthur’s Pass who bought these cottages includes the family of Guy and Grace Butler. One of New Zealands’ foremost landscape artists, Grace has works hanging in many places including the Robert McDougall Art Gallery in Christchurch. Along with Guy who, according to his granddaughter Jennifer Barrer “gave up his legal practice to carry his wife’s easel,” Grace ran what was the first hostel in the village. Now called the Outdoor Education Centre, its front lawn was the site of the first skiing in the area!

I was fortunate to meet Jennifer who showed me through her ex-tunnellers holiday home that still has many pieces of the original furniture. Jennifer, an author, including a book about her grandmother, told me of her early days in Arthur’s Pass. They used to travel from Christchurch in a Ford V8 to restore the cottage her parents had bought; she treasured her times there. Jennifer loves alpine plants and had a magnificent flowering clump of the wonderful alpine daisy on display.

Arthur’s Pass National Park, created 1901, has 114,357 hectares within its boundaries and both tourists and locals appreciate its variety of tramps and some 28 public huts. If you plan to stay in some of the remote huts, tickets, or an annual hut pass, must be purchased from the Department of Conservation before your trip.

When on any walk in New Zealand mountains, remember to fill in an Intentions Card and leave it at the local DOC office, don’t travel alone, take extra food as well as everything you need to ensure your safety.

Other activities in Arthur’s Pass include skiing at Temple Basin, while the village itself is a good base for exploring Cave Stream Scenic Reserve with its 362-metre cave and interesting limestone outcrops.

Accommodation ranges from the YHA, backpacker hostels to motels, holiday homes, or bed and breakfast. Food covers the same budget to moderate price range. (See your local visitors’ information centre for details)

So whether it’s the proximity to ski-fields and terrific tramps, (the kiwi word for hiking!) or just a place to chill out with your holiday reading, Arthur’s Pass must be added to your holiday destination list!

an afternoon of birds in the city

Yesterday afternoon (25 July 2009) I went for a walk with my camera in Travis Wetlands, Christchurch. This land was once used by my great grandfather to run a herd of cows, and sold the fresh milk around Christchurch from the back of a horse drawn cart –  my mother remembers this from when she was a young girl some 80 years ago.  Today, the last remnants of the ‘bog’  or ’swamp’ as it was once called has been saved from the encroaching houses is now a valued and award-winning ‘wetland’. Check out their website, and visit when you get to Christchurch – you can get there by public bus.

national park visitors up _- down in Japan & USA

passing it on . . .

National park visitors rise in poorer countries

Theories on attendance trends vary, from economic options to crowds

//

Slideshow

National spectacles Nearly 400 national parks can be found all across America, and feature breathtaking vistas, rock formations millions of years old, and more

By Emily Sohn, Discovery News

updated 4:17 p.m. ET July 16, 2009 //

Tourists are flocking to national parks in growing numbers, according to a new study, but only in the poorest places. In richer countries, including the United States and Japan, visitor rates have reached a plateau or have even started dropping.

From a practical perspective, understanding how frequently people visit protected areas is an important step towards better managing those parks. On a more emotional level, the study helps fight recent concerns that people are falling out of love with nature.

“I think this is very encouraging news,” said lead author Andrew Balmford, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. “In most places, wildlife is not going to survive unless people, in particular local people want it.”

Balmford and colleagues looked at total numbers of visits to as many protected areas as they could find information about. Most countries do not systematically collect these kinds of numbers, and no one had ever tried to create such a wide-scale database. So, the researchers had to troll through whatever was out there and talk to anyone who knew anything.

They eventually gathered data on about 280 protected areas in 20 countries, including Ghana, Korea, Madagascar, the Philippines, the U.K., and Sri Lanka. For each park, the researchers looked at changes in the number of visits over at least a six-year span, stretching from 1992 to 2006.

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Last year, a well-publicized study in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” found that visits to natural areas had dropped sharply in the United States and Japan over the last 20 years, and the researchers concluded that people were losing interest in nature-based recreation.

The new study, which appeared in the journal “PLoS Biology”, found only slight declines in these places, among other wealthy nations. And in 15 of the 20 countries, attendance was on the rise, with particularly fast growth in Tanzania, South Africa, Peru, South Korea, Ghana and China.

There are a variety of theories to explain the trends. One possibility is that people with more money can afford other leisure options, including video games and Web-surfing, that may be more convenient and alluring than visiting the wilderness.

// INTERACTIVE National park secrets The best advice on how to avoid the crowds and even save a bit of money at a selection of ten parks, some well-known, others way off the beaten path.

Another possibility is that parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone have reached their capacity, deterring people who want to avoid the crowds. People with expendable income may also be more likely to travel to parks in foreign lands, where visitation rates are rising, though in most places other than Africa, the new study found, the majority of park visitors are locals.

Adina Merenlender, a conservation biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, offered yet another explanation: Americans may be forgoing national parks in favor of local ones, which provide easier and cheaper ways to enjoy nature but were not considered in the current study.

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Growing numbers of people are birding, walking and swimming with their kids in the local creek, she said. Voters continue to support initiatives that fund parkland. And millions of dollars are spent each year to protect open spaces.

“All kinds of different people use open spaces in different ways and express their love of nature in different ways,” Merenlender said. “I’m not sure if visits to national parks is a good metric for how people are loving nature. They may be loving their backyard park to death, actually.”

Figuring out how many people are hitting which parks could help officials decide where to allocate resources for facilities and how to manage growing crowds. By looking at how much money people are spending to enjoy nature, Balmford said, this kind of work might also help scientists put an economic value on wilderness tourism.

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The work brings up some concerns, he added. For one thing, our zeal for nature can damage both the environment we trudge through and the economics of the places we visit — if the money we spend goes into a travel agent’s pocket instead of into the local community.

“Nature tourism isn’t unequivocally good news for nature,” Balmford said. Still, the fact that people continue to love nature is a welcomed sign in light of other, more negative reports.

“If we’re not careful, we could write a premature obituary for nature,” he said. “That would not be a good idea.”

southern skies: a starlight national park in the sky?

 

 

The Mackenzie Country is one of the special places left where you can still see the night sky and its dazzling starlight and, from the top of Mt. John, I have a 360º view of the big skies of the McKenzie Basin and its carved-by-ancient-glaciers landscape.

Fed by the glacial waters of New Zealands Southern Alps, below me is the 30-kilometre long Lake Tekapo with its remarkable turquoise colour – caused by the refraction of light through the finely ground rock particles of the melt waters.

Lake Tekapo in winter (photo from Earth & Sky)

Through-out the world stars are disappearing under the haze of light pollution and locally, a group called the Starlight Reserve project are pushing to preserve this view and gain UNESCO world heritage status for a ‘National Park’ in the Mackenzie Country sky.

Graeme Murray of Earth and Sky tells me “The local council are leading New Zealand and many parts of the world and have special ordinances about the use of lighting and light pollution.  All Lake Tekapo lights must be beamed downwards and no spillage is allowed.  It recognised the dark sky as a valuable resource to protect and value and to also encourage the responsible use of energy.”

At the international convention on the Dark Sky in Spain last year, Starlight’s proposal received total endorsement and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) nominated Mt. John and the Lake Tekapo area  as the pilot study for the first ever “World Heritage Starlight Reserve”

They are hopeful this protection and status will be formally announced during January – in Paris, during the International Year of Astronomy 2009 that marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first astronomical observation through a telescope in 1609. (SEE THE LATEST NEWS RE THIS –  November 2009 here)

Because if its latitude, astro-tourism or stargazing from the summit of Mt. John (a ‘roche moutonnee’ a braided rock mass formed by old glaciers) is considered the best in the country and seduces and captivates locals and tourist alike.

A daytime tour of the observatory tells me something of the latest scientific space research and I view Alpha Centauri, which is not only a daystar but also the earth’s closest star.

McNaughts Comet: Mt John ( photo from Earth & Sky)

Later, I join the Earth and Sky night-tour and with their powerful telescopes explore the wonders of the southern sky.  The sky seems diamond-studded and it seems as if I could reach out and touch the moon or Saturn.

We see clusters of stars, the Orion nebulas, Mars, Jewel-box cluster, the Southern Cross and clouds of glowing gas that are millions of light-years away.  The moons craters are breath taking: add the fascinating rings of Saturn and I’m amazed I’ve never looked skywards until now.

This observatory also has New Zealands largest telescope and the scientists are searching for objects such as extra solar planets and celestial bodies that constitute dark matter and black holes.

Part  of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings was filmed in this area which was first populated by Maori during eel and bird hunting expeditions in the summer, and the Mackenzie Basin really only became known to the Pakeha (European) settlers in 1855 when James Mckenzie, a Scottish shepherd, was arrested for sheep stealing in the area.

For more information:

www.earthandsky.co.nz

http://www.phys.canterbury.ac.nz/research/mt_john/index.shtml

http://www.tekapotourism.co.nz/

This article was originaly published in the South China Morning Post

Also see: http://matadortrips.com/worlds-best-stargazing-destinations/