On a walk with my family along the beach from Pukerua Bay yesterday, I encountered three kinds of sculptural form: only one of which was a “sculpture” in the more conventional sense. The others were created by humans and nature, but all were equally impressive, giving the sense we were walking through some kind of outdoor art gallery.
Pukerua Bay
Last train to Muri: train station closes after 60 years
Having a train-mad two year old means that I get to ride trains a lot. This is fine by me, because trains are a great vantage point from which to gain insights into our environmental history. They bring us closer to how our forefathers saw the world before cars were the main means of transport. Continue reading
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A rare survivor – Taupo swamp
Our environmental history is littered with the stories of wetlands that were drained to make way for farmland or settlements. But in the Wellington region, there is a rare example of a substantial wetland that survived this onslaught. It is an example of how – paradoxically – an environment’s utility as a source of a commercial resource can sometimes provide for its preservation.
Over the last 150 years there were a number of attempts to drain the swamp for farming, but these attempts succeeded in only partially draining the swamp. Continue reading
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