This beautiful beast was one of a fold of Highland cattle grazing beside the Canaan Road down to the Harwoods Hole track. Highland cattle have been bred in the Scottish highlands and the Outer Hebrides for centuries. They have two coats of hair—a soft undercoat and an oily, long outer coat—that helps them weather the [...]
Takaka
On the main road going towards Takaka, you might catch a glipse of this old place.
This is a Pelton wheel, the type of water turbine used in the Cobb Power Station. The Pelton wheel is suited for hydro stations that have a high head, which Cobb does. They are very efficient and can generate power from a small volume of water. For instance, the flow of the Cobb River into [...]
This photo was taken in 2014 and shows the view from the Cobb Power Station back along the Cobb Valley Road. You can see how narrow and windy the road is, not to mention the steepness of the hill rising above the road. Cyclone Gita damaged the area pretty badly earlier this year, so it [...]
The Cobb Valley in the Kahurangi National Park was formed by a large glacier that left behind a steep-sided valley. The Cobb Power Station has the highest hydraulic head of any hydro station in New Zealand: the dam is nearly 600 metres higher up than the power station. The Cobb River runs through the Tasman Mountains [...]
This is the bridge further down the Takaka River from where yesterday’s photo was taken, on the road into the Cobb Valley. As you can see, the approach to the bridge has been washed away. The photo was taken in April, six weeks after Cyclone Gita did her damage.
This photo taken in 2014 shows the bridge that crosses the Takaka River just below the Cobb Power Station. The road provides access to the Cobb Valley in the Kahurangi National Park, but it’s not usable at the moment because another bridge further down the Takaka River was washed out in Cyclone Gita in February 2018. Repairs [...]
These fluted rock formations are called karren. They’re formed in marble, from rainwater forming a weak acid and dissolving away the rock. This photo was taken at the top of the hill that looks out over Gorge Creek, near Takaka. The photo shows the view looking down, as the photographer walks across the karren, taking [...]
On the drive down Canaan Road to the Harwoods Hole track, we rounded a bend and found a fold of Highland cattle grazing on the corner. The term “fold” is used for a herd of Highland cattle because, in Scotland, they used to be kept in stone shelters called folds during winter to protect them [...]
The tangled hump of vines is old man’s beard (Clematis vitalba), and anyone who was watching New Zealand television in the late-1980s will remember David Bellamy’s “Old man’s beard must go!” ad. Old man’s beard grows vigorously, strangles its host plant, shades out other plants and stops the seeds of other species from germinating: Bad [...]
