A headland made of old fire

Rock and time

The Cape is a volcano, and an old one: roughly 38 million years. It erupted under water, which is why the rock is the shape it is, and the place to read that is Boatman's Harbour on the seaward side of the headland.

The Waitaki Whitestone Geopark — a UNESCO Global Geopark, which wrote the project a letter of support — describes the Cape in almost the same terms: an ancient volcano approximately 38 million years old, with impressive geological outcrops and vast vistas. The pale Oamaru limestone that gives the town its Victorian precinct and gives this site its colours is the other half of the story: volcanic rock at the headland, whitestone in the country behind it.

The shape of the ground matters to the planting more than the geology does. The project works a band across the harbour-facing slopes and the ridge — about 850 m by 450 m, 20.94 hectares — and most of it is steep: 18–29°, and much of that over 30°. The blocks run from 18 m above the sea to about 102 m. The Cape's true high point, the 127 m spot height on the map, is about sixty metres south of the project's southern edge and is not part of it.

No fossil find on the Cape itself is on record. The strong local fossil story is a moa, and it belongs to the coast just south of here rather than to this rock — it is on the first sculpture's page.

Tangata whenua

Three things can be said here plainly:

• The whole Cape is covered by a Wāhi Tūpuna overlay. It covers virtually all of the headland, and it is mapped on the Waitaki District Council's website.
• All consents go through Ngāi Tahu, alongside Māori retaining customary rights. That is the frame for every hole dug and every sculpture bolted down on this headland, not a footnote to it.
• Ma Kōtukutuku means "Place of the Tree Fuchsia". Kōtukutuku is one of the species going back into the ground here.

The relevant rūnanga is Te Rūnanga o Moeraki, and the trust deed makes working with them an obligation rather than a courtesy. The spelling of the project's own name is a question that has been put to mana whenua and not yet answered, which is why this site uses the spelling on the current logo and adds no macron of its own.

Later history

The headland has been worked for as long as the town has been there, and the evidence is still on it. The harbour and its breakwater lie directly below the northern slopes; the Cape Wanbrow Lighthouse Reserve and the Oamaru pilot light sit at the eastern end; a set of wartime gun emplacements is reached by a track off the top of the ridge, and the Oamaru Coastal Defence Group looks after them. There is a quarry, too, with a whale proposed for the ground above it where the town can see it. Then the cover came off, and pines went in.

The pines are the most visible piece of that history and the least finished piece of the plan. One block of the project — the largest steep one — is dominated by exotic pine over five metres tall, with small patches of ngaio underneath. The Council earns carbon credits from those trees and intends to remove them as native planting allows. It is the reason existing cover and restoration are never counted as the same thing: on paper that block is the greenest ground on the Cape. How the spur turns back to native is part of the plan.

Makotukutuku is not the first organisation to work here, and says so at every opportunity. The dog owners' group, the mountain bikers who built most of the track on this hill, Forest & Bird — whose nursery raises nearly every plant that goes in — the Friends of Oamaru Harbour, the Blue Penguin Colony and the coastal defence group have between them put in thousands of voluntary work hours.

Plants and wildlife

The Otago Regional Council publishes planting lists for Otago's ecosystems, and the ecosystem for ground like this is CLF4.2 — Kahikatea, tōtara, mataī forest. That is the classification the Cape carries, and the planting here sticks to the guide. So the answer to "what could this become?" is not an adjective. It is a list of 48 species, with each one's growth rate, exposure tolerance, maximum height and the fauna it feeds.

That list is also the planting order, and the plan follows it. Five of the species on it are both fast-growing and able to take exposure — kānuka, kōhūhū, tī kōuka, ngaio, lancewood — and they go in first, as shelter. The fleshy-fruited understorey that actually feeds birds follows. The slow, long-lived trees the forest is named for — tōtara, mataī and kahikatea, which can reach 50 m — go in last, once there is something to shelter them:

Five of the species on the Council's own list for this forest type carry a threat classification of their own, which is worth stating plainly: this restoration is not only bringing cover back, it is bringing back plants that are in trouble in their own right.

• Kunzea robusta — kānuka · Threatened – Nationally Vulnerable
• Olearia fragrantissima — fragrant tree daisy · At Risk – Declining
• Pseudopanax ferox — fierce lancewood · At Risk – Naturally Uncommon
• Lophomyrtus obcordata — rōhutu · Threatened – Nationally Critical
• Teucrium parvifolium — teucridium · At Risk – Declining

There is a working list as well, agreed with Forest & Bird — 43 species, overlapping the Council's heavily but not completely. It adds the hard coastal plants a list drawn up for lowland valleys would not: mānuka, mātagouri, southern rātā, flax and toetoe.

The tree the place is named for

Kōtukutuku, Fuchsia excorticata, is on both lists. It is the largest fuchsia in the world, reaching 12 m, one of very few native New Zealand trees that drops its leaves in winter, and it has papery bark that peels off in strips. It carries both nectar and fleshy fruit, which is to say it feeds birds twice.

Birds

No formal bird count has been done on the Cape. What follows is what people working here have seen, dated where the sighting is dated.

• Tūī and korimako / bellbird — Returning to the town, on the back of locals trapping predators and planting pockets of native bush.
• Riroriro / grey warbler — A pair recorded nesting in the flowering currant beside the path down from Lookout Point — in a weed the project is working to remove. Recorded August 2026.
• Kererū / wood pigeon and sooty shearwater — Occasional visitors.
• Kororā / little blue penguin — The Oamaru Blue Penguin Colony is at the harbour edge directly below the cliff-top blocks, with its own planting programme.
• Australasian swamp harrier — The common hawk here, and the living analogue of the extinct Eyles’ harrier the sculpture trail depicts.

And then the hope list — birds currently absent from here, but that could be returned if the habitat were really got right: kākā, kererū, tūī, korimako / bellbird, tīeke / saddleback, toutouwai / robin, kiwi, weka. That list is the subject of one of the sculptures, the Hope Panel, the only one on the trail about birds that are merely gone from here rather than gone altogether.

What the restoration is up against

Exposure, first: this is a coastal headland and most of the project area is steep. Then weeds — African boxthorn, broom, gorse, docks, hemlock, ivy and flowering currant, and clearing the boxthorn, broom and gorse is a funded output in its own right. Then browsing animals: rabbit protectors go on at planting, and two of the most useful species on the Council's list are marked highly palatable. And then the arithmetic. More than half of this ground — 56% of it — already carries some kind of cover, and one block of that is a pine plantation, so the measure of progress is not how green the hill looks but how much of the bare ground has been planted. Those two numbers are never added together, on this page or in the plan.

Why here

Restoration priority is assessed nationally by how much of an ecosystem's expected natural cover is left. This is why the Cape is worth the effort:

There is no survival rate here yet. The monitoring programme calls for three sample grids of fifty plants counted every three months against a target of 90% or better; the counting has not started, and the figure will go here when it has.