If your inner child pines to play on the mountain at Dunedin’s Marlow Park, there’s an adult version up the Waitaki Valley. The Elephant Rocks are a playground of otherworldliness.
A faint track encircles an ampitheatre. Free open space allows car-worn children a downhill chase, the big sister forgetting her adolescent awkwardness and the wee brother loving the sudden spark.
Visiting can take a 10-minute hello or two hours of paying homage to these photogenic beasts.
Initially, the rocks appear elephantine merely in size; they’re an uplifted seabed. But spend a bit of time here and things change.
The ground is plain grass. There aren’t any trees or even shrubs. Instead, where trees would normally be are these huge, hulking presences.
The landscape doesn’t make sense, doesn’t slot into humanoid expectations.
Beating heat from baking hot sun acts as a psychotropic aid and next thing there’s an elephant. Not just its smooth grey curvaceousness but eyes and a trunk. Nearby is an adorable baby porpoise. And is that a fur seal? A frightened ghost? The smiling, spurting whale at Marlow Park? An obscenely obese, malevolently cackling, horrifically distorted human skull?
Walk and absorb. Wander at will. Just human, just rocks. Smooth shapes and bareness.
It’s a minimalist’s fantasy of a non-materialist world where life isn’t so built around Stuff Management, where things are simpler, today’s mantra: "how much stuff do we really need?".
Alas, nature’s call reminds us of the conveniences of modern living and lo, there’s a long drop, disguised behind rocks near the carpark. Thanks to post-pandemic modern manners, there’s even hand sanitiser.
We return to our bikes, campervans and cars, and whisk ourselves away.
