Bush City 

Curriculum links
Which topics of study can it support?
How long might this take?
Where do I find it?
Why should I take my class to visit this?
What is there to do there?
What should I know about this?
Possible topics for discussion
Further information
Related objects

 

Curriculum links

Learning areas

  • Science
  • Health and Physical Education

Which strands will it fit with?

  • Science - Living World, Planet Earth and Beyond
  • Health and Physical Education - Healthy Communities and Environments

Key Competencies

Thinking - Students will identify native New Zealand plant life and recognise that they were common to New Zealand before the introduced species from other parts of the world.

Levels of achievement

Levels 1-8 

Year group

Years 1-13

Back to the top

Which topics of study can it support?

  • New Zealand Environment
  • Earth Science
  • Geology
  • New Zealand Society

 

How long might this take?

Allow 20-30 minutes to thoroughly explore Bush City.

Back to the top

Where do I find it?

  • Outside, accessible through Level 1 cafe, or across bridge at the end of Mountains 2 Sea on Level 2.
  • Lost? Ask a Te Papa Host.

Why should I take my class to visit this?

  • A truly alive, outdoor exhibition area that was built for explorers and budding archaeologists, geologists, botanists, ecologists, and physical geographers.
  • A great variety of activities in one area.

Back to the top

What is there to do there?

  • Explore a cave with simulated glow-worms, stalactites, and moa bones - make sure a cave wētā doesn’t jump in your hair!
  • Walk the swing bridge, don’t look down!
  • Dig up a recreated mosasaur skeleton from the fossilpit.  
  • Find out about Auckland’s volcanoes and the forest that was once found around the shores of Wellington Harbour about 200 years ago.
  • Examine the fine, layered ash falls from central North Island volcanoes.
  • Visit the waterfall which is cascading over columnar jointed basalt lava flow.
  • Check out the greywacke rock wall adjacent to the waterfall. Greywacke rock in the Wellington region is around 180-220 million years old, and this wall shows you many of the folding and faulting features that you would commonly find in any greywacke rocks.
  • Look closely at the old rocks by the waterfall, which are up to 530 million years old, and see their colourful crystals and feel their different textures.

Back to the top

What should I know about this?

  • Bush City is a recreated bush habitat, enabling visitors to take a short walk through the New Zealand bush. Bush City is accessed by a bridge from inside Te Papa on Level 2 over a man-made lagoon.
  • Most of the plants in Bush City would have been seen on the Wellington waterfront over 200 years ago.
  • Bush City highlights a variety of geologically specific environments or landforms that are common throughout much of New Zealand, hence the greywacke wall, the basalt columns forming a waterfall, the limestone cave and grottos. The volcanic landforms include basalt scoria volcanism typical of Auckland and the central North Island Taupo Volcanic Zone, volcanism dominated by stratified pumice ash fall deposits and andesite/dacite lavas (from Ruapehu).
  • A seascape is also presented with typical stratified marine sediments of Late Cretaceous age (about 70 million years old), within which there is a fossil of a mosasaur skeleton (ceramic), buried within an authentic Late Cretaceous quartz granule sand (from Fairfield Pit, near Dunedin). The wall surrounding this area sports a variety of Late Cretaceous marine fossils (ceramic) that are characteristic of Late Cretaceous New Zealand rocks. Such rocks are common in many parts of New Zealand. The fossils include bivalve clams (inoceramids and trigonids); belemnites and ammonites, both of which are related to squids; octopus and nautilus; and they are in correct stratigraphic order, so the fossils low down are older than those higher up. Also on display is a very special limestone of Late Jurassic age. This is the only limestone known to occur locally (in the Wellington region) from within the greywacke. It is about 146 million years old and is from near Mukamuka in Palliser Bay, east of Wellington.
  • The limestone caves, containing darkened passage ways, stalactites, glow-worms, cave wētā and the bones of the extinct flightless moa, were inspired by the Waitomo Caves. Limestones between 30 and 20 million years old (of Oligocene - Early Miocene age) are widespread in New Zealand, and caves are a common landform associated with these limestones. Limestone caves are really good places for finding fossils of animals (birds in particular) that have become trapped. Such fossils have enabled us to learn a great deal about the natural history of New Zealand over the last million years.
  • The enormous wall of colourful rock, located by the waterfall, represents 250-million year old greywacke rock. It shows the folding, faulting, and intrusive features that have occurred as a result of immense forces within the Earth that have folded and cracked them. The wall is based on a natural outcrop within greywacke that is exposed on the west coast of the North Island near Whitireia at the southern entrance of Porirua Harbour. Greywacke is the most common hard rock within New Zealand and it makes up about 60 per cent of our landmass. It is a metamorphosed sedimentary rock. It is thought that it accumulated as sediment on the sea floor adjacent to the north-east Queensland sector of Gondwanaland.
  • The rocks down by the waterfall are up to 530 million years old and are evidence of our link with the ancient continent of Gondwanaland, which consisted of the countries presently known as Antarctica, Africa, Australia, South America, India, and New Zealand. The types of rock include Waingaro Schist, which is 500-530 million years old; Cobb Valley Talc Magnesite Schist, 500 million years old; Takaka Marble, 440-460 million years old; and Charleston Gnesis, which is 115 million years old. See City Life! A Guide to Bush City for further information.

 

Possible topics for discussion

  • Ever been stuck in the bush and fancied a bite to eat? Did you know that some plants in the New Zealand bush can be eaten? Some examples include the root of the bracken fern, which was a staple food source for Māori, much like the kūmara. The centre shoot of the nikau palm is juicy when eaten raw, but can also be steamed in an earth oven. Karaka fruit were once an important part of the Māori diet, although the fruit had to be carefully soaked in fresh or salt water for a period of several days or weeks to remove the poison.
  • You have just fallen over and gashed open your leg, or you ate something not quite right and now you have got a sore tummy! What would you do if there were no antiseptics or antibiotics? Did you know that some plants in the New Zealand bush can be used as an alternative? Plants such as kawakawa, also known as the pepper tree, was used to relieve toothache and bad breath. The leaf tips of the koromiko were eaten or drunk to cure diarrhoea and vomiting. Manuka tea was used to reduce fever or as a diuretic. Flax gum was applied to boils, wounds, and toothaches. Check out the Bush City guide, available from the Information Desk on Level 2, for more details.
  • Check out the Taupo ash-layer cake and the geological wall in Bush City. How have these rock layers and strata formed? Rock strata are layers of material laid down as eroded sand and mud in the sea and then squeezed (compacted), folded, and faulted by natural forces (tectonic forces associated with plate collision within the Earth’s crust). Strata are typically seen as bands of different coloured or differently structured material exposed in cliffs, road cuts, quarries, and river banks. Each band represents a specfic mode of deposition - river silt, beach sand, coal swamp, sand dune, lava bed, and so on.
  • Brainstorm some uses for the harakeke or flax plant. Think about the role of harakeke in Māori society, especially prior to European contact. The uses of the flax fibre were numerous and varied. Clothing, mats, plates to eat off, baskets, ropes, bird snares, lashings, fishing lines, and nets were all made from flax. Babies were even given rattles made from flax. Harakeke can be found along the lagoon in Bush City.
  • Can you figure out how the mosasaur in the fossil pit in Bush City went from being a living, breathing marine reptile, swimming off the coast of New Zealand, to being a pile of old stones? Fossils are formed when a living organism dies and the body or part of the body is preserved in some way, usually by being buried in sediment. Burial prevents destruction of the organism by scavengers, bacteria, or weathering. Burial can occur on the bottom of the sea or in rivers or lakes, or it can occur on land by blown sand, falling volcanic ash, or by the entrapment of the organism in some sticky substance such as tar or tree sap.
  • Have a look through the telescope at the entrance of Bush City. Can you see the Wellington fault line? The Wellington fault runs through Wellington city along the motorway through Lower Hutt and Upper Hutt. What is a fault? The surface of the earth is broken into giant plates of rock which each move in different directions - these are called tectonic plates. New Zealand is astride a plate boundary zone. Here, the Australian Plate to the west and the Pacific Plate to the east are in collision. Furthermore, they are moving in two different directions; the Pacific Plate is moving westwards and the Australian Plate is moving northwards. These two colliding plates have not only caused the forcing up of land to create the Southern Alps, but the effects of the collision are responsible for all of New Zealand’s earthquakes.

Back to the top

Further information

  • Bush City Amphitheatre is available for school groups to eat lunch on a fine day; if it’s not fine, check with a Te Papa host to see which indoor spaces are available.
  • The Bush City guide has extensive information about the native plants along the nature walk, and is available from the Information Desk on Level 2.
  • There are extensive Tai Awatea | Knowledge Net, Te Papa’s online resource accessible via the internet for this area.
  • Department of Conservation website has some good information on native New Zealand plants - www.doc.govt.nz.
  • Check out this website http://www.geonet.org.nz/ run by the GeoNet Project to find out when the last earthquake happened.
  • http://www.gns.cri.nz/ Website of GNS Science.
  • Check out this website for information on making your home earthquake safe http://www.eqc.govt.nz/.
  • http://www.gns.cri.nz/outreach/qt/quaketrackers/ for more information on the Quake Trackers project.
  • Not such a good area if the weather is bad.

 

Related objects

  • Check out life in New Zealand from the top of the mountains down to the bottom of the ocean in the Mountains to Sea exhibition on Level 2.
  • The story of the scientific and Māori creation of New Zealand is told in the Awesome Forces exhibition on Level 2.
  • NatureSpace Discovery Centre is available for hands-on interaction with the New Zealand environment on Level 2.

Back to the top

Bush City
New Zealand Government