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Curio Bay
A Submerged Forest

(By Hunter.)

A Way down in the Southern part of the province of Otago, farther south even than the Bluff, is a little settlement named Waikawa. Near here, about an hour's steady walk along the coast, is one of the most wonderful spots in New Zealand. It is known as Curio Bay, and is the site of a submerged and petrified forest.

At high tide practically everything is under water, but when the tide recedes one can walk over what seems to have been, in some bygone age, a standing forest. Nothing stands now except the old stumps, but in all directions trunks of trees lie around, varying in size from what were tree ferns, to trunks almost two feet in diameter. In some cases the rings that indicate annual growth can be seen, and the bark distinguished from the more solid “wood.” Some of the trunks show half their circumference above the rock in which they are embedded. Others have been broken away flush with the surface. Yet again, semi-cylindrical depressions in the rock would make it appear that trees had been lifted out bodily. In the heart of one trunk I noticed a black, brittle substance closely resembling coal.

One can get some general idea of the spot, by recalling the appearance of paddocks from which standing bush has been cleared sufficiently long for all branches and small wood to have decayed and disappeared, with many of the tree trunks commencing to sink into the ground, the old stumps of the big trees still standing, and, dotted round in numbers, the small conical-shaped stumps of tree ferns. Imagine this, but everything of solid stone instead of ground and grass and trees, and the whole a yellowish-brown colour, and one has a pretty fair idea of the appearance of the submerged forest at Curio Bay.

Times change and we change with them! In Victorian days if the head of the household wanted to “blow a cloud” he usually retired to the back garden, or even the coal house! As for smoking in the streets it simply wasn't done! Of course women didn't smoke at all, and would have been horrified at the idea. And there were no smoke rooms. Think of that the next time you go to your club and enter its luxuriously appointed lounge for smokers. And for every man who smoked fifty years ago a hundred smoke now! But your modern smoker is not so easy to please as devotees of the weed used to be. The present demand is for tobacco of choicer quality than of yore. Hence the widespread popularity of the five famous toasted brands: Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Cavendish, Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold, which are not only extraordinarily pure (owing to the elimination of nicotine in them by toasting) but possess a flavour and bouquet delicious as heart of smoker can desire.^*

But there are other wonders. The area in which the forest is now situated was apparently at one time very much higher. It appears to have subsided bodily for a space of about half a mile between two bold headlands, and in the steep face thus exposed at the headlands can be seen further examples of petrifaction and coal deposit. Then the ground seems to have sunk again in a lateral direction, dividing the bay into a series of small plateaux standing one above the other, sometimes as much as eight or ten feet. Through the solid rock, from the sea up to the shore, run huge chasms filled with long golden-brown kelp, which the sea keeps in constant motion. Truly a weird place. I was alone when I visited it, and the dusk was approaching. All at once I became aware of a disturbance in the kelp near me, and presently a penguin emerged, waddling along the rock. With memories of those interesting pictures of Shackleton's Polar expedition in my mind, I gave chase with the intention of heading off the stranger and holding converse with him, but he disappeared into the kelp where I dared not follow, and struck out into deep water.

On the fringe of this remarkable freak of rock, can sometimes be found small boulders which were obviously at some stage of their existence pieces of wood, the texture of the wood being clearly visible. Then again boulders can be broken open, and inside are perfect impressions of fern leaves. Curiously enough, these impressions are all black in colour, while further inland upon the hills similar impressions can be found in white. The scientist attached to Scott's expedition made several visits to this spot, and students from the American Universities have been regular visitors. It is stated that the petrified vegetation at Curio Bay belongs to a period of fourteen million years ago, before such things as the grasses now familiar to us were in existence, yet the imprints of the ferns embedded in these boulders are remarkably similar to some of our commonest ferns of to-day.

We are accustomed to think of our little country as still too young to have either history or tradition, and yet geologically speaking, it seems it is regarded as one of the oldest countries of the world. From time to time discoveries of profoundest interest are made, and some day these scraps of evidence will be pieced together and a knowledge gained of matters which today we can only guess at.

So with Curio Bay. What may not those waters hold of which to-day we see only a tiny portion, a small relic of some terrific cataclysm which devastated that part of the country? Or was it only a gradual subsidence, as even now a gradual lifting is taking place of portions of our coastline elsewhere?

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