Moeraki Boulders

 

Only a little way north of Dunedin is a beach where large spheres, the Moeraki Boulders, lie. Their perfect shapes and sizes are quite unusual. The boulders fall out of the mudstone cliffs behind the beach. There are small spheres, too, but most of these are picked up and taken by visitors. On the beach the stones decay and reveal their interiors of lime crystals.

Of course the Maori have a story to explain the boulders. They believed that the boulders were food baskets or water gourds from a wrecked canoe. The nearby reef was supposed to be a canoe hull wreck and a large rock was the canoe's navigator. Connections from the past into the present, from people relating to the land. In fact, all of the South Island is envisioned by Maori to be a canoe, with Stewart Island just off the southernmost point its anchor. The North Island is a very large fish caught by the fishermen in the canoe (South Island).