The seacoast has many native plants adapted to the salty winds. They range from flaxes to
blue-grey tussocks to flowering gems such as gentians and sand convolvulus. The increasingly rare pingao, a beautiful green-orange sedge, has been almost completely ousted by the introduced marram
grass.The jewels in the Crown of South Catlins' animal life are the three rare species of dolphin, seal and penguin. The Hector's dolphin live at Porpoise Bay all summer and are known to
play for hours with bathers, though if they are not in the mood the local rule is they must not be approached, but left alone to feed or rest.
Where they go in winter is not known. They are a
national treasure and at the moment the number of visitors does not appear too stressful for them, though sadly the total number of Hector's dolphins is in longterm decline.
The New Zealand
sealions, formerly called Hooker's Sealions, can be seen at Waipapa Point. They do not appear to be bothered by human visitors, as they show no fear. When you see them, you will understand why their
size gives them confidence - a mature bull weighs up to 500 kg. Like their namesakes the lions of Africa, they have plenty of time to sleep. Visitors have often thought they were looking at a
dead animal, until they have gone too close, when he has reared up and shown them a red yawn. The fur seal is another of the family seen around the coast, more on rocky shores. He is much more
shy of humans, and also shy of the sealions, which have been known to eat them! A very rare visitor is the elephant seal, a
four-tonne giant of the sub-Antarctic.
The yellow-eyed
penguin requires a whole book to itself. The birds pair for life and always return to their favourite nesting site. They nest amongst the roots of forest trees or flax, within calling range but
not sight of the next pair. If New Zealand was the original garden of Eden, penguins are the original innocents. They have no idea how to defend themselves or their chicks from predators. Stoats,
cats and dogs are their worst enemies but possums and rats have been known to take their eggs as well. The little that is known about their feeding habits suggest they swim and dive to extraordinary
distances. Such stamina commands great respect.
Other birds to look out for include shags, terns, gulls, oystercatchers, dotterels, herons, muttonbirds and many others.
Seaweeds,
shells and colourful gravels add interest to the natural history of the coastline. The gloriously iridescent paua shell is often washed up, as are Captain Cook's turban, 'chinese toenails', fan shells,
cat's eye, mussels, and wheel shells, to name a few. The giant bull kelp impresses visitors, especially if they look down from a cliff and observe it moving in the surge of the ocean, alive like the
tresses of a mysterious underwater being. There are bright green, white, pink and brown seaweeds on the reefs, and myriads of small crabs and chitons under loose rocks.
The Landscape
The south west wind from the ocean brings in copious amounts of nutrients such as sulphates, magnesium, calcium and potassium along with the salty sea air, making for healthy
growing conditions for grazing animals, which are the mainstay of the local economy. The modest clover plant which fixes nitrogen in the soil as well as providing nutritious tasty feed for sheep,
cattle and deer, is the key to our natural system of food production.
Farm homes are generally surrounded by thick shelter-belts, designed to deflect wind up and over the homestead area, which
may include several acres of garden. Most common is a row of flax with a couple of rows of Olearia, often the one from Chatham Islands, then perhaps some cabbage trees to add interest, and finally some
rows of Cupressus macrocarpa a large cypress imported from the western USA. It is one of the few large trees which can resist the salt in the winds from the sea, and hundred-year old windshorn belts
planted round the very first homesteads, for instance at Slope Point (southernmost point of South Island), provide dramatic photo-opportunities.
In prehuman times the land was covered with
native forest right to the seashore. The Catlins Forest Park provides some reminders of the original cover. Take a walk through Waipohatu near Haldane and you will see the enormous diversity of the living
forest of this South East coast - there are broad-leaved flowering trees like kamahi, broadleaf, fuschia; ancient podocarps like totara, rimu, matai and miro; orchids, grasses, perching plants and
twenty-eight species of fern.
Native birds you may see or hear in the forest include tui, bellbird, tomtit, pigeon, and fantail.
Sadly, this Garden of Eden has its evildoers in the
form of introduced plants and animals that damage the balance of the native ecology. Arguably, the possum and the stoat share the honour of being most destructive of the forest ecosystem. Possums
munch their way through thousands of tonnes of leaves, shoots and berries each year, and have been witnessed taking eggs, while stoats (and ferrets) - kilo for kilo the most dangerous killers on earth -
create havoc among the native bird populations.
