Ancient wildlife sculpture
Moa waewae taumaha
The heavy-footed moa. Installed at the bottom car park, November 2025.
In place on the Cape.
Where we are now
In place, and blessed on 28 November 2025 at the Test Street car park at the foot of the walking track: a weathering-steel silhouette with the bird’s skeleton profile-cut from polished stainless and stood off the surface, alongside a steel cabbage tree. Designed by Trish Shirley from the fossil record, built by Apex Engineering, signage by Anna McLean, funded through the Council’s Better Off funding.
What it becomes
The first of a series along the Cape, read as a sequence rather than as single objects.
Why this matters
The sculptures are the reason a visitor keeps walking, and this species is the reason the trail starts here. The heavy-footed moa is really Oamaru’s bird.
“These beautiful and unique birds once strode across our landscape, and it’s been a pleasure to create something based on the fossil record, with accuracy and the evidence integral to the sculpture.”
What needs to happen
4 of 4- Designed from the fossil record
- Funded
- Built and installed
- Signage written and installed
In deep time
Pachyornis elephantopus. An enormously hefty bird with huge feet and legs and a small head with an oddly down-curved beak. Its holotype was found near the mouth of Awamoa Creek, just along this coast: the first moa ever discovered, and a sensation in the 1800s.