Shag Point Nature Reserve

Shag Point, Baby Seals, and the Best Grass in New Zealand!

We are a family of four who were living in the San Francisco Bay Area when we decided we needed a BIG change so we moved 7000 miles away to Dunedin, New Zealand. Dunedin is a coastal city on the southern end of the South Island and is known as the wildlife capital of NZ. Click subscribe and join us on our adventure as we explore the wilds of New Zealand and teach ourselves about traveling with kids, sustainability, vegetarianism, and more!

Shag Point is a fascinating nature preserve on the east coast of New Zealand's South Island located between Dunedin and Oamaru. It has cultural significance to the Maori becauase it was a hunting ground for moa (extinct giant flightless bird) and the site of a village called Matakaea. The rocky coast is a great place to see fur seals and seabirds and apparently a seven meter plesiosaur fossil was found nearby. We spent the afternoon watching the seals (and baby seals!!) and playing in the tall grass. It is definitely worth a visit if you're driving up or down the coast!

Shag Point Nature Preserve:

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Moeraki Boulders, New Zealand

The Moeraki Boulders are unusually large and spherical boulders lying along a stretch of Koekohe Beach on the wave-cut Otago coast of New Zealand between Moeraki and Hampden. They occur scattered either as isolated or clusters of boulders within a stretch of beach where they have been protected in a scientific reserve. The erosion by wave action of mudstone, comprising local bedrock and landslides, frequently exposes embedded isolated boulders. These boulders are grey-colored septarian concretions, which have been exhumed from the mudstone enclosing them and concentrated on the beach by coastal erosion.[1][2][3][4]

Local Māori legends explained the boulders as the remains of eel baskets, calabashes, and kumara washed ashore from the wreck of Arai-te-uru, a large sailing canoe. This legend tells of the rocky shoals that extend seaward from Shag Point as being the petrified hull of this wreck and a nearby rocky promontory as being the body of the canoe's captain. In 1848 W.B.D. Mantell sketched the beach and its boulders, more numerous than now. The picture is now in the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington.[5] The boulders were described in 1850 colonial reports and numerous popular articles since that time. In more recent times they have become a popular tourist attraction, often described and pictured in numerous web pages and tourist guides.

South Island | Wikipedia audio article

This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
South Island

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SUMMARY
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The South Island (Māori: Te Waipounamu) is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand in surface area; the other being the smaller but more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman Sea, and to the south and east by the Pacific Ocean. The South Island covers 150,437 square kilometres (58,084 sq mi), making it the world's 12th-largest island. It has a temperate climate.
It has a 32 percent larger landmass than the North Island so is sometimes referred to as the mainland of New Zealand, especially by South Island residents, but only 23 percent of New Zealand's 4.9 million inhabitants live there. In the early stages of European (Pākehā) settlement of the country, the South Island had the majority of the European population and wealth due to the 1860s gold rushes. The North Island population overtook the South in the early 20th century, with 56 percent of the population living in the North in 1911, and the drift north of people and businesses continued throughout the century.