A lovely warm day today for our trip up along the coast to Westport. he scenery along the coast is stunning and would easily equal the coastal highway from Adelaide to Melbourne. The road winds it’s way alongside the sea and the road is lined with Nikau Palms and little red flowers which Pauline identified as an African native called (we think) montibretia. The Strongman mine memorial was our first stop for a photo. This was erected in memory of the miners who lost their lives in the Strongman Mine Disaster on 19th January 1967.
We then moved on to Punakaiki for a short walk along the well maintained and presented track to view the Punakaiki pancake rocks and blowholes.
Just our luck to arrive at low tide on a calm day which is not the best viewing time so blowholes were off the menu today, however the pancaked rocks were great.
It is generally agreed that the layers are the result of a process called stylobedding, a process in which grains of sand and shell and skeletons were put under such pressure that they passed into solution. For reasons still unclear, some minerals merged to form thin seams of mudstone between layers of sandstone.
The Surge Pool Pauline in the Pancakes
Back to the car park where a couple of very tame Weka were hanging around hoping for a feed !
Our stop for the next couple of nights is at Cape Foulwind 10km from Westport, we are located in a little area next to the domain and the Star Tavern not far from a marvellous view over the Cape.
Cape Foulwind Parked up for the Night
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