Invercargill is the southernmost and westernmost city in NZ, located in what is known as “Southland.” From what I read/gathered, it sounded as if people from the “Southland” were equivalant to Southerners in the U.S. – the whole Southern hospitality thing. I’m not sure if that’s true or if it was something the guidebook made up because we found Kiwis to be friendly and hospitable regardless of location.
We didn’t have any real motivation to head to such a remote area – there was nothing “to see” per se – but maybe it was just that remoteness that drew us there.South NZ (and for that matter, most of NZ from what we could tell on a map) is all farmland. We saw deer farms and of course, lots and lots of sheep and lamb. The resulting plush green rolling hills, peppered with little lambs was so idyllic and “natural”, that it was hard to believe that everything used to be woods and trees. We read that something like 75% of the natural environment – trees, forests, etc – was stripped and made into farmland during the peak of European colonization. It was also crazy to us to read that the only native animals to NZ are birds…pretty much everything else was imported.
One such “invasive species” brought by the Euros was the possum. We heard differing stories about why they were brought to NZ (fur trade, or used by farmers as a way of natural pest control), however, since there were no natural predators of the possum in NZ, their population ran rampant. The debate over possums could be found everywhere we went in NZ – from the poisons used to kill the possums seeping into the water stream to the commercially driven approach to possum control (selling ‘possum merino’ products). To me, it seemed a bit hypocritical to argue possums being “bad” because they eat bird eggs and strip forests…when humans and farming has pretty much done the same thing, if not worse. Not taking a side, but just pointing out the obvious.Debates aside, in this quiet part of the South Island, we saw hardly any tourists or tour buses.In fact, it’s quite likely that sheep outnumbered the human population.
