Ok so, I live in New Zealand. The South Island, Southland (province) to be precise. I live in a Town called 'Gore' (brilliant name, huh) and just 10
minutes away is a drive-thru village called 'Pukerau' (Pron. pook-er-ow).
Before we white folk arrived here, there was already a brown race called the Maori (pron. mold-e). The name of the village is in the Maori tongue and
unlike English place names, it is not a word but a sentence describing the place.
The official translation (as cited on the welcome sign) reads "Land Of [The] Rolling Hills", which is accurate since all you see in any direction is
rolling grassy hills.
This is where the intrigue emerges.
(If there are any Maori on these forums who come across this thread and find I've got the following wrong, I'm sorry but I'm doing my best)
Edit: I had a poor retelling of the maori creation myth here, but it was unnecessary and I found a better telling
here but it's not important.
I'm cant exactly remember the local legend (actually at all)
BUT I do know there was a recent controversy over the translation of
'Pukerau'.
Apparently It actually translated to "Sky [Of] Raging Fire".
The local legend says that some moon collided into earth leaving a big 2 kilometre crater and moon rock all over the region. I have seen the supposed
crater and underneath all of the brush and gorse, it looks like a crater.
I've also seen the rock. In fact so common is this rock in the region that my old house had a piece the size of a small tree stump sitting in the
garden. It's all over the place in sizes ranging from pebble to mini-cooper.
I need to find a photo of my old rock, but I'll tell you that it was very porous like basalt, but very heavy at the same time.
I also recall testing the rumour that hitting it with a sledge (putting some dust in the air) gave off the smell of gun powder. The was a faint
smell.
This isn't it, but it's very much what the rock's look like
external image
People have said it is basalt, but that's even stranger because while New Zealand does have a volcanic presence,
there are no volcanoes in the
South Island.
So where did this strange rock come from?
The name of the region suggests it came from space. It's really funny if it were true considering the value of space rock, and we just used is as
door stops
I'll do a little digging and see if I can get both a pic of the actual rocks and better clarified information.
[edit on 9/5/2008 by Good Wolf]
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Mod Edit: Title spelling.
[edit on 11/9/2008 by Badge01]