The Tuia Mātauranga Pōkai Whenua GeoTour follows the footsteps of early explorers of Aotearoa New Zealand taking you to places where leaders of the past searched for food, resources and ways to adapt and survive in this new land.
Use the Pōkai Whenua GeoTour as your classroom to explore the stories of the past, in the present, to preserve what is unique in Aotearoa New Zealand for the future.
Collect the codewords to get the Geocoin puzzle pieces.
To be able to complete this GeoTour and receive your special Geocoin collectable, remember to take a note of the codeword placed in the cache. This will need to be recorded in your passport which can be downloaded here.
63 of the 150 Pōkai Whenua GeoTour caches will contain a randomly placed special FTF token (a replica of the Tuia Mātauranga GeoTour commemorative coin). This is yours to keep! If you find more than one, you might consider leaving it for the next person who finds the cache.
A walk along the Fern Gully Track is step back in time. The track follows an old sawmill track through to a small clearing and location of this cache. Along the way you can enjoy the lush native bush setting, accompanied by the songs of multiple birds in the canopy and the stream beside the track.
It is an easy two hour return walk with minimal elevation gain.
Timber, and timber milling, was an important industry on Stewart Island, started by William Stewart when he established a ship-building enterprise in Port Pegasus in 1826. The timber would have been hand-cut and pit- sawn. In 1861, in Kaipipi Bay, the first mechanical sawmill was established using steam-power to drive the saws. Over the following 60 years numerous sawmills were established around Paterson Inlet, Halfmoon Bay and Horseshoe Bay with their distribution determined by the ease of accessibility of millable timber such as rimu.
By 1886, with most of the best timber been felled, much of Stewart Island had been proclaimed State Forest and by 1906 had been reserved for the protection of flora, fauna and scenery. The only areas open to milling where the coastal fringes around the northern coastline of Stewart Island. The last sawmill operating was Māori Beach, which closed in 1931.
As you walk along this track, take yourself back to the late 1800s - early 1900s and imagine the bustle and noise of trees been felled and moved along this track to a nearby timber mill. It is a stark contrast to the tranquillity you will experience today.