nature of manawatu
these are from a couple weeks ago when the head science curator (miriam), a local plant expert guy and i went out to round bush reserve, located somewhere between himtangi and foxton beaches. it was a pretty impressive chunk of land.
the most noticeable thing when you start to get only a minute or so in is all the noisy nature! by the road where we parked the car was pretty much silent, but as we walked in we could hear all sorts of birds calling and enormous bees buzzing around. as we got past the flax swamp area and into the bush, the bird calls echoed and there was a continuous swoosh of branches and grasses in the wind. there was an overwhelming feeling of being enveloped in nature.
some of the more interesting pieces in the forest were the dead and dying pine trees that were poisoned in order to restore nature trees. their giant dried up branches looked eerily impressive.
earlier that day, we went to himatangi beach to see the dunes and the surf was booming and crashing like a storm was brewing and in fact it did start to rain just as we left round bush.
we also briefly stopped at the manawatu estuary to see the vegetation and the long mudflats were speckled with air holes and other little baubles i couldn’t identify. it would be great to see the flats during the spring and summer when the birds are out in full force.
Comments
Great blog!
I run a website called envirohistory NZ http://envirohistorynz.com and am looking at doing a post on the (rather sad) history of Round Reserve. Could I please include your photo of the bush there to show what it is like today? This is an example of the kind of story I am thinking about doing: http://envirohistorynz.com/2011/11/05/food-basket-to-floodway-the-story-of-awapuni-lagoon-and-mangaone-stream
Cheers
Catherine (you can email me at envirohistorynz at gmail dot com)
I have just read your history of Round Bush Reserve which you mentioned above, and I must congratulate you on your excellent effort. I visited the Reserve last week, accessing it firstly from the State Highway (a couple of stiles at the fencelines would have helped) then drove around to the Wylie Road access. It was sad to see so much effort had gone into new plantings at this end with virtually all having died.
I worked at the Manawatu County Council office in Sanson during the 1960s -1980 when the MCC was responsible for maintenance of the Reserve. That part of the country is now within the Horowhenua District Council area, but the Reserve is now under the control of DOC.
I hope to go back soon and possibly mark a loop track to help visitors to view the big trees. There are so many baitline tracks marked with numbered triangles that it could be confusing for visitors to navigate through the bush.
Merv Matthews, former County Clerk, Manawatu County Council.
merv6817@gmail.com