Cape Wanbrow

Geology

The Cape is a volcano, roughly 38 million years old. It erupted under water, which is why the rock is the shape it is; Boatman's Harbour on the seaward side of the headland is where that is easiest to see.

The headland sits inside the Waitaki Whitestone Geopark, a UNESCO Global Geopark, which counts the Cape among its sites for its outcrops and its views. The pale Oamaru limestone of the town's Victorian precinct comes from the country behind the headland rather than from the Cape itself.

The project works a band across the harbour-facing slopes and the ridge — about 850 m by 450 m, 20.9 hectares — and most of it is steeper than 18°, 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 just south of the project's southern edge and is not part of it.

The first moa ever described was found along the coast just south of here — it is on the first sculpture's page.

Tangata whenua

• 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.
• 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 requires the project to work with them. The history of this place, and what the name carries beyond the gloss above, are theirs to tell.

Later history

The headland has been worked for as long as the town has been there. 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. The cover came off, and pines went in.

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. How the spur turns back to native is part of the plan.

Makotukutuku is not the first organisation to work here. 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 forest that belongs on ground like this is CLF4.2 — Kahikatea, tōtara, mataī forest, and the planting sticks to the Otago Regional Council's list for it: 48 species.

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 those species carry a threat classification of their own.

• 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. It adds hard coastal plants the Council's list does not carry: 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.

Birds

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

• 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.

Birds absent from here that could return if the habitat were 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.

Constraints

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. 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 progress is measured by how much of the bare ground has been planted.

Why here

Restoration priority is assessed nationally by how much of an ecosystem's expected natural cover is left.