The Great ACT-NSW-NZ Trip, 2023-2024 - Shag Point
Late Cretaceous mudstones and sandstones, and bituminous coal, now eroded into headlands, a convinient natural boat harbour, and multiple unmarked mineshafts which are not convinient at all.
Māori extensively settled the area in the 15th Century, and one important tradition holds that a double-hulled trading canoe ran into a storm off the coast here, with the cargo washed ashore and petrified into the famous Matakaea boulders, and less symmetrical boulders around the point and beachs here. They're mudstone concretions, many of them formed around fossils, and in one case around a eight-meter long elasmosaur.
The point is also noteworthy for plant species more normally found in alpine and subalpine grasslands.
Shag Point, Aotearoa New Zealand
