Enormous landslide formed landscape
The Green Lake Landslide near Lake Monowai is the result of a section of the Hunter Mountains slumping into the Grebe River Valley, filling it to a depth of 800 metres. The slip has an area of 45 square kilometres, and an estimated volume of 27 cubic kilometres, and is the largestknown landslide above sea level of its type in the world.
The landslide occurred 12,000 to 13,000 years ago. Odd ripples reported on Green Lake might suggest that gradual slumping is still under way.
In one of the more recent landslides, 12 million cubic metres of rock collapsed from the east face of Mount Cook/Aoraki in 1991, reducing its height by 30m. The familiar ‘‘12,349 feet’’ is now 12,218 feet.
The loneliest horse
In 1936 a horse lurched out of the fog on top of the Tin Range on Stewart Island and plodded up to a pair of explorers.
The newspaper reported: ‘‘She was one of the pair which had been landed before the Great War in connection with the working of the old tin mine, further down and about a mile distant. She, with her companion, had been left to roam the range when the tin mine venture came to an early end.
‘‘Her companion died after a few years, and this poor creature has pursued her existence in solitude on the range ever since. Perhaps the loneliest creature in the world, certainly the loneliest horse, she was in good condition but the soil being light and marshy her hooves, for want of wearing surface, had spread, growing outwards and upwards – not a pleasant sight.
‘‘Poor thing, she had been there for over 20 years.’’
Early Catholics in Southland
The Roman Catholic Church made an appearance in the south in November 1840. Bishop Jean Baptiste Pompallier arrived at Otakou on his ship Sancta Maria with several priests, but departed disappointed 10 days later after finding the Ma¯ ori population sparse.
Nevertheless, he wrote: ‘‘They received the visit I paid them very well . . . During the stay I made in Otago, I celebrated mass one Sunday with as much solemnity as possible in a large store that an English Protestant merchant had the goodness to lend me for the occasion.
‘‘All the natives of the vicinity attended thereat, and some 20 English, French and American whalers also came.
‘‘The greater number of the whites were Protestants but all the same they displayed the greatest religious respect for the ceremonies of the church.
‘‘Two sermons were preached, one in English and the other in Maori, and one would have thought that on that day all were Catholics.’’
There was a small Catholic population in the south that included John and Mary Kelly, who made the journey to Otakou to be married by Pompallier.