Canterbury Plains

Here's a couple of Canterbury Plains postcards I have picked up. The plains are a flat area surrounding Christchurch city and intersected by a number of braided rivers, including the Rakaia Gorge. They were once tussock grassland and swamp forest but now form a vast, flat patchwork quilt of pastures. Here sheep and cattle - and occasionally deer, llama and emu, are farmed. Both these postcards feature the same area - the Rakaia Gorge cutting through the center and the Southern Alps, with Mt Hutt, to the top left.

Lush and green - they're hardly ever this green! Must have been a good rainfall that season.


In winter - time to go skiing at Mount Hutt!