Sunday March 28th - The Petrified Forest and Living Forest

 Sunday March 28th - The Petrified Forest

Today we decide to visit the Petrified Forest just below the Curio Bay campsite. It was being "guarded" by a DOC volunteer who spent 6 hours a day watching the Hoiho Penguin site as they are an endangered species. They also remind people to not get too close to their site.

Thjere is a really good audio-visual display in the reception area of the Campground office called "The Gateway". It provides a lot of information about the creation of the Petrified Forest as below:-

This forest was created about 170 million years ago by a volcanic eruption on Gondwanaland. Torrential rain after the eruption washed a huge flood of silica ash down the volcano which swamped and felled the forest. The silica meant that the buried forest petrified relatively quickly, rather than rotted away. Once New Zealand separated from the rest of Gondwanaland it sank. Then later it rose again and the ocean eroded the softer sandstone away and left the much harder petrified forest rock.

There was a Black Back Gull guarding the site as well:-

The view of the site from the top was impressive. It was also the site of the Hoiho Penguins home site at the far end:-

The stairs down were a rickety looking structure but on close examination they were pretty well constructed:-

As soon as we got to the bottom we could see some of the petrified logs in the rock shelf:-

There were also petrified stumps in the rock:-

There was a huge swell of Bull Kelp at the far end:-

Quite nearby was what they call "The Living Forest" which is said to be the "child" of the ancient one. Interesting that the two forests are side by side:

This is the beginning of the loop track:-

There were quite a few nice Native Trees in there - not much bird life though:-

A Rata:-

... and a young Rimu:--