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The Tuia MÄtauranga GeoTour is about having fun discovering the history of Aotearoa New Zealand by finding sites of significance in local communities from early Pacific voyaging and migration, European settlement to present day. The interaction between people, and people and the land have provided a rich history that the GeoTour invites you to explore.
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Originally Te Maru: the shelter. Timaru Harbour provided shelter for travelling canoes, and whalers. Early European settlers may have incorrectly recorded the spelling. Another interpretation is tī: cabbage tree; maru: shelter: sheltering cabbage tree. Since maru may also mean luxuriant growth, the meaning may be luxuriant cabbage trees.
Tacking off the South Canterbury coast in February 1770, Lieutenant James Cook saw and described the Hunters Hills, but did not land. When whaling began in New Zealand waters, the reefs at Caroline Bay were used (as the MÄori had used them before) for shelter on an otherwise inhospitable coast.
In March 1839, the Sydney-based Weller brothers, already established at ÅtÄkou, set up a shore whaling station on the boulder beach below Timaruās clay cliffs. However, the Wellersā bankruptcy ended shore whaling there in 1841.
I have wanted to place a cache here for a long time and when this GeoTour was suggested to me I jumped at the opportunity.
The cache is a 1Ā litre snap lock so plenty of room for swaps and travel bugs
The cache is hidden under some dirt on a hole slightly to the left of the driftwood and hopfully the previous finder left a rock (pebble) on top. It is NOT hidden in one of theĀ cavesĀ
From this point you can see a lot of what makes Timaru such a beautiful place. Itās definitely not the usual place where people go to see the view, but it is very specialĀ because of that.
When you arrive at GZ take a little time to sit down and enjoy the view and soak up the atmosphere š
I have sat at this point many times and looked out over the sea in front of me.
I have often wondered what the view would have been like centuries ago
To be able to complete this Geotour and receive your special geocoin, remember to take a note of the codeword on the log book of the cache. This will need to be recorded in your passport which can be downloaded from here. If the passport is unavailable for any reason just keep a note of the codeword and try again later.