Home from home!

The drive to a place called Moeraki was resonabley flat with alot of farmland around. Moeraki is a small fishing village with a beautiful coastal beach. It has become very well known becuase of its strange physical boulders that are present on the beach. The moeraki boulders are one of the strangest things i have seen. An incredable cluster of 12 sperical boulders which have been exposed through sea errosion allowing for thousands of people to walk down to the beach and veiw them each year. They ly along the stretch of Koekohe Beach on the wave cut Otago coast between moeraki and hampden. The boulders consist of mud, fine silt and clay, cemented by calcite. There are numerous ideas about how there were fromed and there composition.

They were amazing to sea, some are only half exposed wile others are fully spherical on the beach and what i found incredable was that are are afew witch have broken up but the peices like a jigsaw in the sand witch put to gethere would still form the majority of a boulder.Its just like they have been exploded in the sand. With an orangey colour on the inside. (i have taken many photos, in the dunedin alnum). It was a blue sky day and amazing to walk along the beach and see these physical wonders. A big tourist attraction but i was very happy to be a tourist at the beach today.

From moaeraki i was onto my next house, the drive to west Taieri witch is roughyly 25 minutes from Dunedins city. The east coast was incredable to drive down, the main motorway 1 witch is the main link up and down the south island took us right onto the coast. All the geography and more is hear and i would love to have my geography teacher hear, its amzazing!! To the coastal erosional features were istunning at Waikouaiti witch is the Otago area north of Dunedin with numerous views of headlands and bays all the way.

Stopping at Matanaka farm, Waikouaiti Otago was extremaly interesting, the first European settlers along the Otago coast were whalers who worked at shore whaling stations set up at various bays and inlets in the 1830s. In 1838 Johnny Jones, a Sydney based trader, whaler and ship-owner, bought a whaling station near today's Waikouaiti. When the whaling trade begun to fall through he bought a large area of land and historicaly this is supposed to be new zealands first farm and oldest buisldings he bought the farm in 1840 and this migrant fammilies moved in and worked there.

From there we headed to dunedin the drive moved away from the coast inland and is extremly hilling with windey roads and numerous areas of forest and the opposite to the cantebery plains with no irrgators to be seen. The way hear constantly reminded of different areas of scotland. It is really amazing how afew hours you can have the opposite types of land use, vegetation, climate all in the one country.

During the week i will explore dunedin itself as i am staying just under half an hour away from the city itself. Its another area thats making me smile already :):)!!