A walk in the quarry park
06/2020
Now that it’s the beginning of winter in New Zealand, rainy days take over. When there were just a few clouds to be seen today and rain was only to be expected later, we drove twelve kilometres out of Tauranga, located in the Bay of Plenty, on the north island of New Zealand, for a little excursion to the quarry park. What was a rock quarry until the 1970’s is now a well maintained park with ponds, flowers and all kinds of trees and native bush.
In Germany, when the seasons progress towards winter, the landscape grows naked and pale. But in New Zealand, even now, at the very beginning of the winter months, there were plenty of amazing colours to be seen in the quarry park.
There were a lot of Tui birds, most of them did not sit close enough to take a solid picture.
The walk through the park is not a picnic – but walking up the hill is how you get to have a nice view over the many kiwi orchards in that area all the way to the ocean with Mount Maunganui sticking out in the background.
One thing I really enjoyed about the park is the Butterfly Garden. I’ve been told many times before how the monarch butterfly latches on to one kind of plant in particular, the swan plant, and how one can watch them hatch on those plants. But I did not expect to see such a wide range of monarch development in the quarry park. From the very caterpillar, to sparkling cocoons and fully developed butterflies. We even got a glimpse of one hatching right there and then. And I have to mention, the monarch butterflies grow way bigger than in Germany.
Mary’s Place, where those nature spectacles area happening, is a little greenhouse. I guess they bring some of the plants and caterpillars there to hatch during the colder season, maybe they do it all year around. I might be wrong, but I imagine it’s simply kind of a maternity ward.
Once I was able to break away from that place, we continued to see many more colourful bushes and a little cactus and succulent garden.
