Patuna Chasm School Trip and New Video from John Weller
Patuna Chasm is a deep cut river gorge walk in the Southern Wairarapa. Last week I went there with a class of year 7 school students as part of their geology camp. Access to the gorge is via Patuna Farm Adventures who drive you to the start for several kilometres across farmland and pick you up about 3 hours later when you have walked through the gorge.
This feature is wave rock. A good question to figure out is how it was formed…
From there you descend into the gorge itself. It’s a very atmospheric walk along the river bed with high vegetated limestone cliffs on each side.
In places there are water seeps on the walls of the gorge allowing flowstone formations to develop like these stalactites.
Lots of colours and interesting textures along the way.
Other points of interest included lots of fossil shells, caves, interesting sculpted sections, as well as a few eels.
As well as the gorge, we also visited Pigeon Bush during the camp to look at the world record-breaking Wairarapa Fault offset (I have a video about this locality on my channel here ) and spent another day at some geological spots along the Palliser Bay coast.
The whole point of education, it seems to me, is to open the eyes of young people to their own potential as well as the richness of the world around them. So after working with a school group it’s very satisfying to get feedback messages such as these:
“Before you came, when I looked at a rock I’d just think “Oh there’s another rock!” But now when I look at a rock I’m like “Oh wow! A rock! I wonder what kind of rock that is?” Now I look at a rock from a completely different perspective.”
“I have always wanted to become a geologist and my experience with you has set that in stone”
“I have learnt so much, you have inspired me and I now want to be a geologist”
“Thank you Julian for your knowledge of the world”
Latest Video
Here is another video from Only One - a heartfelt plea from film-maker John Weller to join forces and take action about the climate.
After 20 years of fighting for Antarctica, John Weller is confronted with perhaps the most heartbreaking effect of the changes he has witnessed - gentoo penguin chicks, born months too late because of the changing climate on the Antarctic Peninsula, soaked and shivering in the freezing rain. His feeling of defeat in these moments can be countered only with deeper knowledge of the scene he witnessed, and a conscious decision to, against all the evidence of impending doom, be hopeful. It’s a conscious decision that we all have to make, so we can continue to fight for what we have left to save.