Driving to Dunedin

Woke up in the morning to this view of Mt. Cook. Then we were on our way back to the coast.

On our Drive we came to a historic site marking so we pulled off the road to visit Takiroa Maori Rock Art.

Under these cliffs  were drawings of

A man on a horse

And

A sailing ship.

So these were clearly done in the 1800s.  They were badly vandalized with graffiti but are now behind a fence.  Always interesting to see how people saw the world long ago.

Then just down the road in the tiny community of Dontroon they'd built a boardwalk through their small wetland.  They'd commissioned a beautiful carved gateway to the marsh.

Most of the birds we saw were European imports like this yellowhammer 

And this Eurasian goldfinch

But the walk was very informative with  native plants' pointed out.  For instance we found out that some plants we thought we invasive were in fact natives.  The spiky plants with the large seed heads are not yucca

But native flax used by the Maori for clothing and mats.  The large grass below is not pampas grass but a native called toetoe.

But we'll call this Australasian magpie, introduced from Australia, the bird of the day.

We drove on towards the coast where we stopped for lunch in Oamaru, a small city with many large Victorian buildings.  Many New Zealand towns have very wide main streets, which is interesting because the main highways are much narrower and sometimes have single lane bridges.

Downtown Oumaru