But another feature of this island is more or less at the top, in the form of a conundrum. Just repeat it to yourself a few times until it sinks in: An island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island in the ocean.
Got that? Said lake (the first one) is Arethusa Pool. The mechanisms is more or less that plucked the rock (s) out of the basin on this island and the resultant pool collected water. It was very atmospheric and made for a cool photo.
What was also cool was that Austin, and the organization that brings people out here to the island has an arrangement with the DOC (Dept of Conservation) to plant native plants. Every time they go out there with a group they plant a tree, bush or vine. This helps with habitat restoration : this is a whole lesson for New Zealand and quite visible here as well as elsewhere. You can easily see where there is a sheep station or cattle, which denudes the vegetation. Just adjacent to a sheep station near Wanaka is a National Park. The difference is quite visible. (The dark hillside is the park).
Part of this as well is the work to eradicate the colonization mammals that are destroying bird life. There is a goal of achieving this by 2050 (or thereabouts) and clearly the areas that are under DOC management are getting a lot of attention. But there are other areas where the possum population is unchecked as evidenced by the number of possum roadkill (thy are partial to the vegetation on the roadsides).
At the end of the day we went in search of a geocache, which was along a public road in a private sheep/cattle station northwest of Wanaka. The work that this family does to maintain the water quality of the glacial river that runs through their farm is notable and part of the story as well.
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