FIORDLAND
This gallery includes images from Te Anau Downs, Hollyford Rd, Milford Sound, Eglinton Valley.
This gallery includes images from the Keppler Track, Te Anau and Lake Monowai.
Fiordland National Park was officially constituted in 1952. Today it covers over 1.2 million hectares and was declared a World Heritage Area in 1986. Fiordland was well known to the Maori, and many legends recount its formation and naming. Demigod Tuterakiwhanoa is said to have carved the rugged landscape from formless rock. Few Maori were permanent residents of the region but seasonal food-gathering camps were linked by well worn trails. Takiwai, a translucent greenstone, was sought from Anita Bay and elsewhere near the mouth of Milford Sound/Piopiotahi. Captain Cook and his crew were the first Europeans to visit Fiordland, and in 1773 spent five weeks in Dusky Sound. Cook’s maps and descriptions soon attracted sealers and whalers who formed the first European settlements of New Zealand. From the middle of the 19th century surveyors, explorers and prospectors began to penetrate the unexplored interior of Fiordland.
Preservation Inlet boomed briefly in the 1890s after gold was found, but efforts to establish mines, timber mills and farms in Fiordland have generally been short-lived. Quintin McKinnon and Donald Sutherland opened up the Milford Track in 1889 and began guiding tourists through the now world-famous route. Richard Henry, one of the pioneers of threatened species work transferred kakapo and kiwi to islands in Dusky Sound in the late 1890s and early 1900s. During the last Ice Age about 20,000 years ago, glaciers originating in central Fiordland spread out to the east across the present sites of Lakes Te Anau and Manapouri, dumping great quantities of rock and gravel in long ridges. When the ice melted, lakes formed behind the ridges. Manapouri is the second deepest lake in New Zealand, and one of the most beautiful. Originally called 'Roto Ua' (the rainy lake) and 'Moturau' (many islands) by early Māori inhabitants of the region, a more recent translation has been ‘lake of the sorrowing heart'. On Mt Titiroa (1710 m), to the south of Lake Manapouri, the whitish peak often looks like snow but it is weathered granite, which has been exposed to the elements for centuries. Source; Department of Conservation. (edited).
Preservation Inlet boomed briefly in the 1890s after gold was found, but efforts to establish mines, timber mills and farms in Fiordland have generally been short-lived. Quintin McKinnon and Donald Sutherland opened up the Milford Track in 1889 and began guiding tourists through the now world-famous route. Richard Henry, one of the pioneers of threatened species work transferred kakapo and kiwi to islands in Dusky Sound in the late 1890s and early 1900s. During the last Ice Age about 20,000 years ago, glaciers originating in central Fiordland spread out to the east across the present sites of Lakes Te Anau and Manapouri, dumping great quantities of rock and gravel in long ridges. When the ice melted, lakes formed behind the ridges. Manapouri is the second deepest lake in New Zealand, and one of the most beautiful. Originally called 'Roto Ua' (the rainy lake) and 'Moturau' (many islands) by early Māori inhabitants of the region, a more recent translation has been ‘lake of the sorrowing heart'. On Mt Titiroa (1710 m), to the south of Lake Manapouri, the whitish peak often looks like snow but it is weathered granite, which has been exposed to the elements for centuries. Source; Department of Conservation. (edited).
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