he city of Wanganui lies at the junction of State Highways 3 and 4, on the flats near the mouth of the Wanganul River. The city services the surrounding rural area which is devoted mainly to sheepfarming, but also to cattle, dairy and poultry farming.

The New Zealand Company ship the Suprise arrived at the mouth of the Wanganui River in May 1840, and a surprise it most certainly turned out to be for the local Maori when they later found they had traded 16,000 hectares of prime land for clay pipes, blankets, mirrors and other knickknacks. Resentment over this deal led to considerable friction between the Maori and Pakeha settlers and in 1848 the government negotiated a new bill of sale, paying an additional three pence an acre for the disputed land - and then took even more! The Wanganui chiefs surrendered just under 34,500 hectares of land for the equivalent of $2000 and this time the negotiators made sure there were no loop-holes. 'All this land within these boundaries,' the chiefs lamented, 'we have wept over, bidden farewell to, and delivered up forever to the Europeans.'

Lake Virginia Reserve is the city's garden show-place and lies on the west side of the river, three kilometres from the city centre. Lake Virginia was called Rotokawau by the Maori for the number of shags to be found around it. I have seen both little black and little shags here and I'm told other species sometimes visit. Mute and black swans are both resident together with various ducks. The ubiquitous pukeko and Australian coot are recent arrivals.

By following the west bank of the river towards the mouth you are almost sure to spot shags, dotterels, oystercatchers and godwits, as well as all three types of gull. Less common are royal spoonbills. Out at sea from the mouth are Australasian gannets, shearwaters and sometimes giant petrels. The Arctic skua is also a frequent visitor.

Bushy Park, eight kilometres from Kaiiwi on the Wanganui-New Plymouth Highway is probably the finest area of native forest left in the Wanganui Region and the pride of the collection is a massive northern rata called, naturally enough, ‘Ratanui’. All of the original bush has been preserved, so take a few hours to wander around and enjoy a prime piece of sub-tropical rainforest.

This broad strip of land along the coast has been intensively farmed for well over a century and much of the rugged backcountry is under beef cattle and sheep. Consequently, most of the forest has disappeared with major stands being found now mainly along the Wanganui River and such places as the Waitotara Valley.

In this area north of Wanganui a number of important fossils have been found, notably around Kaiiwi. The first bones of the extinct North Island goose were found in a local swamp in 1886, together with a large number of moa bones which are now in the Wanganui Museum. Another interesting fossil found near Kaiiwi was an intact moa egg - unbroken specimens being very rare. This was found in a cave exposed by a roadside cutting and is also now in the museum.