Westland Tai Poutini National Park — national park
Image by ThierryBEUVE from Pixabay

Westland Tai Poutini National Park

  • 2 min read
  • 43.567° S 170.083° E
  • UNESCO World Heritage
  • UNESCO natural beauty

Interesting facts

  • Franz Josef Glacier's Māori name means 'the tears of Hine Hukatere': according to legend, her tears for her lover Tuawe, killed by an avalanche, froze into ice.
  • Fox Glacier's Māori name, Te Moeka o Tuawe, means 'the bed of Tuawe', completing the story of the two lovers.
  • Geologist Julius von Haast named Franz Josef Glacier in 1865 after the Austrian emperor, and called Fox Glacier the Albert Glacier.
  • Fox Glacier was renamed after New Zealand's premier William Fox following his visit in 1872.
  • The snowfield feeding Franz Josef receives up to 15 metres of precipitation a year, among the highest totals in the world.
  • Franz Josef is about 12 km long and up to 300 m thick, and its tongue ends only about 300 m above sea level.
  • St James' Church at Franz Josef was built in 1931 with the glacier framed in its window; by 1954 the ice had retreated out of sight.
  • Unusually, Franz Josef advanced by about 1.4 km between 1983 and 1999, before shrinking by 1.5 km between 2008 and 2017.
  • A gold rush in the mid-1860s led miners to work the black-sand beaches, founding settlements such as Gillespies Beach and Ōkārito.
  • Long before that, Ngāi Tahu travelled this coast to gather pounamu, the prized New Zealand greenstone.

Why it is worth it

Westland Tai Poutini National Park runs from the crest of the Southern Alps down to the Tasman Sea on the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island, and within a short distance it goes from peaks over 3,000 m to lowland rainforest and coastal lagoons. The highest point is Mount Tasman at 3,498 m. Moist westerly winds meet the mountains head-on and drop enormous amounts of rain, which feeds both the dense temperate forest on the lower slopes and the snowfields above — and that snow, in turn, feeds two of the most famous glaciers in the country.

Franz Josef Glacier, Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere, and Fox Glacier, Te Moeka o Tuawe, descend from the snowfields of the main divide towards valleys lined with rainforest, so that ice and green forest lie within sight of each other. Near Fox Glacier township lies Lake Matheson, a small dark lake formed when a block of glacial ice melted out as Fox Glacier retreated some 14,000 years ago. On a still morning its water mirrors Aoraki/Mount Cook and Mount Tasman almost perfectly, and a loop track of about 2.6 km leads round it to the classic viewpoints. To the north, Ōkārito Lagoon is a haunt of the white heron, kōtuku, and the lowland forests shelter the rowi, or Ōkārito kiwi, an endangered kiwi of the lowland forest.

The park was created in 1960 to mark a century of European settlement in Westland, and at 1,320 km² it is New Zealand's fifth-largest national park. Since 1990 it has been part of Te Wāhipounamu – South West New Zealand, a World Heritage Site covering much of the wild southwest of the island. Beyond the glaciers, the Copland Track climbs a river valley to hot springs beside Welcome Flat Hut, one of the most rewarding walks on the coast.

Getting there

The park's two villages, Franz Josef / Waiau and Fox Glacier, lie on State Highway 6, which runs down the West Coast; Franz Josef is about 135 km south of Hokitika by road and some 25 minutes' drive from Fox Glacier. The nearest airport is Hokitika (HKK), about 120 km away. Timaru, on the east coast, is closer in a straight line but lies on the far side of the Southern Alps.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in West Coast 6The Most Beautiful Places in New Zealand 37The Most Beautiful Nature Sanctuaries in New Zealand 5The Most Beautiful Gardens, Parks and Forests in New Zealand 7The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed National Parks 27The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Nature Sanctuaries 43The Most Beautiful National Parks 61The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Gardens, Parks and Forests 61The UNESCO Sites of Exceptional Natural Beauty 77The Most Beautiful Nature Sanctuaries 91The Most Beautiful Gardens, Parks and Forests 232The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites 557

From the encyclopaedia

Westland Tai Poutini National Park is a national park located on the western coast of New Zealand's South Island. Established in 1960 as Westland National Park to commemorate the centenary of the European settlement of Westland District, it covers 1,320 square kilometres of largely mountainous terrain and forest. The park borders the Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park along the Main Divide of the Southern Alps, and includes many of the West Coast's glaciers, most notably including the Fox / Te Moeka o Tuawe and Franz Josef / Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere glaciers.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

-43.56700, 170.08300per Wikidata