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Te Wahipounamu

The extraordinary beauty of Fiordland was recognised by the United Nations in 1986 when it was made a World Heritage Area. The Fiordland National Park was described as having 'superlative natural phenomina' and 'outstanding examples of...the earth's evolutionary history'.

The landscape in this park, situated in south-west New Zealand, has been shaped by successive glaciations into fjords, rocky coasts, towering cliffs, lakes and waterfalls. Two-thirds of the park is covered with southern beech and podocarps, some of which are over 800 years old. The kea, the only alpine parrot in the world, lives in the park, as does the rare and endangered takahe, a large flightless bird.

Te Wahipounamu

Te Wâhipounamu is thought to contain some of the best modern representations of the original flora and fauna present in Gondwanaland,.
The site incorporates several National Parks:
- Aoraki/Mt Cook
- Fiordland
- Mt Aspiring
- Westland

New Zealand’s high rainfall and many sunshine hours give the country a lush and diverse flora — with 80 percent of the trees, ferns, and flowering plants being native. From the kauri forests of the far north to the mountain beech forests and alpine tussock of the Southern Alps, you’ll find fascinating plants and trees in every region. You’ll be awed by the majestic evergreen native forests that include rimu, totara, many varieties of beech, and the largest native tree of them all, the giant kauri. Underneath the trees you’ll find a dense and luxurious undergrowth including countless native shrubs, a variety of ferns, and many mosses and lichens.

Splashes of Colour
The yellow flowers of the kowhai tree are some of the prettiest you’ll ever see, and if you visit the North Island, you won’t be far from the beautiful pohutukawa tree. Its bright red flowers bloom in December, giving it the title of New Zealand’s Christmas tree.

FAST FACT:

New Zealand’s most famous tree is a kauri called Tane Mahuta. Named after the Maori god of the forests, Tane Mahuta stands over 51 metres high, has a girth of over 13 metres, and is believed to be over 2000 years old.

National Parks
Over 20 percent of New Zealand is covered in national parks, forest areas and reserves. Our 14 national parks contain an incredible variety of unspoiled landscape and vegetation. Administered and maintained by the Department of Conservation Te Papa Atawhai, these parks provide opportunity for a wide variety of activities including hiking, mountain biking, skiing and snowboarding, kayaking and trout fishing. Most national parks have excellent hiking tracks and camping facilities, including nearly 1000 huts throughout the country. You’ll also find information centres at these parks, and helpful signage along the tracks.

Te Wâhipounam

These lakes are fed by Glacier melt water and have the most incredible colours, usually a light blue, sometimes almost white, from all the fine rock, ground to a powder by the Glaciers. The colours and the surface are ever changing - we have seen them so still that it is almost impossible to tell the reflection from the mountains behind when you turn a picture upside down and we have seen the with wave crashing on to the beaches. They can be so still and clear we have looked down and watched cormorants hunting underwater over a bottom perhaps 50' below. There are a few boats, mostly tinnies or glass fibre boats trailed in for fishing so they are virtually still on the surface, dots in the vastness of the lakes.

The mountains tower above the lakes - the mountains beside the lakes rise to over 7000 feet, some with a powdering of snow or ice at the top but mostly sheer rock faces angled upwards - we are sitting along the joins between the Australian and Pacific plates which are still tearing the fabric of this land and throwing it up at crazy angles to be smoothed by glaciers in successive ice ages.

A huge tract of this land of lakes, mountains, rivers and fjords ranging from alpine dessert to thick rainforest has become a World Heritage Area called Te Wahipounamu from the original Maori for the area, The Place of the Greenstone. This World Heritage Area covers the whole South West region of South Island and alone covers 10% on the surface of New Zealand and integrates and fills in between the National Parks of Fiordland, Mount Aspiring, Westland and Mount Cook, all vast in their own rights. Te Wahipounamu is one of the great temperate wildernesses of the world, snow-capped mountains, glaciers, tussock grasslands, lakes, rivers, fjords, wetlands and 1000 km of wild coastline.

Getting There

The Milford Track (53.5 kilometres) is in the heart of spectacular Fiordland National Park, part of the Te Wāhipounamu - South West New Zealand World Heritage Area, situated in the South Island of New Zealand.

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