The Great ACT-NSW-NZ Trip, 2023-2024 - Cromwell
We stopped in Cromwell because @purrdence wanted to look at the museum exhibit on the Chinese goldminers that had once lived in the area. It was quite an interesting exhibit, as was the one about the construction of the dam that largely solved the problem that the area is the one of driest in New Zealand despite having its longest river. Admittedly the new water level flooded a significant part of town. And the discovery of a large faultline in the immeadiate vicinity of the dam site made a lot of people very unhappy. I also found out about the Cromwell Flightless Chafer Reserve, but see a following post about that.
Much of the rock in the area is schist, or heavily foliated schist, originally deposited as marine sediments 200myo, eroded 60myo, uplifted 2myo ago, brutalised by the Ice ages until 16kyo, and treated rather harshly by the Europeans stripping every possible mountain slope that might contain gold.
A few species, already seen elsewhere.
