Sasha Says - Geopark and Geosites

21 April 2020

Radio announcer: Time to talk Geopark. Joined on the line as usual from home by Sasha our geoeducator. How are you doing today Sasha?

Geoeducator: Very well, thank you Dan. How you?

Radio announcer: Yeah, awesome, awesome. Surviving in the bubble. But really keen to explore more of the district, particularly from a Geopark perspective when we get out of lockdown. What have you got to help with that?

Geoeducator: Oh look, we've been working really hard just to put a lot of new information on our website. So that's www.whitestonegeopark.nz. Now, I know there still seems to be a bit of confusion over the geosites and what a Geopark is. So just to briefly explain the Geopark. If you think of it like I guess an open air living museum and the geosites within it are exhibits within that museum -individual exhibits. So of course, it's not a museum in the fact that things are we're preserving them and we're not touching them - you know, it's, we're interacting with our environment as we as we go around - once we're out of lockdown. But the geosites, of course, geo meaning earth. So, the geosites are all related to either a geological or a geomorphological (which means rivers and earth processes) a site. So it's sites relating to the earth that have been identified as being either of scientific interest or some of them of cultural interest, such as the Maori rock art sites that we've got. And some of them are of social interest. An example of that we've got the Golden Point battery down in East Otago. So we've got a number of different sites and what we're doing is we're trying to set up a separate page on our website dedicated to each geosite. So if you click through onto our website, go to 'explore' and then you'll see 'geosites'. Now, this is being updated really frequently at the moment as I'm writing more and more text to go on this. So just this last week, we've uploaded text on 'Valley of the Whales' and 'Wai O Toura' site and 'Anatini'. Now, these are all up around the Duntroon area, these three, and they're accessible on the Alps to Ocean track. So once we're out of lock down, if you're doing the Alps to Ocean Track, these are all ones that are either easily accessible or you can see from the Alps to Ocean Track. There are more of course, as well that are along that section. So we're just wanting to encourage people just to get online and have a look at the geosites and you might just find some more information that you either didn't know about before or that really interests you that you would like to visit once we're out of lockdown. And if you've got any questions or want to know more information, just flick us an email. We're more than happy to help. And there have been areas that have had quite a bit of research done on them as well, which we've not included yet. But that will be coming later on, because, of course, you know, you've got people like me that want to really delve in and and find out to the Nth Degree all the information I can about a site. So if if there's a site that you're particularly interested in, flick us an email and we'll see if we can help you there as well.

Radio announcer: And your email address again...

Geoeducator: So email address is info@whitestonegeopark.nz.

Radio announcer: That's cool. Thanks very much for your time, Sasha. We'll catch up with you next week.

Geoeducator: Thanks, Dan.

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