It was next morning that I heard the bridge had washed away. I had hammered over it during the night – back in the 90s – a time when you could do a tad over the speed limit on country roads, with reasonable confidence nobody in uniform was waiting somewhere in the murk. On that… Continue reading What’s Happening to New Zealand’s Haast Pass?
Tag: Westland
Cabin Fever and Paleocene leaf fossils in the Haast
Easter, 1971. The family is holed-up in a tiny home-made caravan at Cole Creek, in New Zealand’s forest-clad South Westland just north of Haast. It’s bucketing-down. We’re there because our Dad has an infatuation with finding the missing backpack of a murdered woman, Jennifer Beard. The pack might just solve the case (the back pack was… Continue reading Cabin Fever and Paleocene leaf fossils in the Haast
Tropical Rainforest in …. South Westland?
At Ship Creek, just a few kilometers north of Haast, in South Westland, New Zealand, there is a wonderful boardwalk though an original swamp forest (It’s less than 3 km south of Coal Creek – where I found my first plant fossils, aged nine). The key tree is kahikatea (Dacrycarpus) and the walk features a… Continue reading Tropical Rainforest in …. South Westland?
Flooded Forests: sea-level rise in the Haast, West Coast, New Zealand
I own a little patch of bush in the Haast, on the wet, West Coast of New Zealand. It was selectively logged a few decades ago, which meant that the large podocarp trees were removed. It then became the edge of what was left of the forest, and farmland. I bought it with the intention… Continue reading Flooded Forests: sea-level rise in the Haast, West Coast, New Zealand