Nature / Sustainable Tourism

Manawatu in the North Island of New Zealand is home to a number of interesting geographical features.

Manawatu’s 6000-year-old sand dune field has attracted great interest from geographers world-wide.

The Manawatu Gorge in the North Island of New Zealand is often called a unique landform because its river flows from one side of a mountain range to the other rather than from a divide, as do most rivers.

Carrington Resort located in Carrington Farms offers luxury accommodation, a tournament standard golf course, an Angus stud farm, one of Northland's largest plantings of grapes and a restored wetland and thriving breeding zone for birds.

The seven distinctive peaks that mark the Cape Brett peninsula’s dragon-like spine are said to represent the seven waka from the great migration when Maori sailed from their mythical homeland of Hawaiiki 1000 years ago.

In the Southern Alps of the South Island, a clownish colourful native parrot called the kea performs antics that can be both alarming and amusing.

Muriwai, a surf beach on the west coast of Auckland, is around 60 kilometres and extends into a regional park of around 8 kilometres.

Not far from Auckland, New Zealand’s most populous city, a sanctuary has been set up on Tiritiri Matangi Island. Volunteers have spent years replanting the native vegetation on the island and several species of endangered native birds have been successfully established.

The kakapo is a fascinating ground-dwelling parrot whose numbers have been decimated by predators such as stoats, cats, rats and dogs.

Taranaki is renowned for its fabulous gardens of roses, rhododendrons, fuchsias and native plants.