The gardens surrounding Mount Hutt Memorial Hall in Methven are about to be transformed as landscaping gets underway in earnest with the delivery of a massive high country boulder to the site.
Affectionately known as “Bob’s Rock”, the rock has been donated by high country farmer and committee member Bob Todhunter.
The greywacke giant from Cleardale Station weighs somewhere between 15 and 20 tonnes, and is estimated to be more than 100 million years old. It was transported down the Rakia Valley in ice as part of the Acheron Advance, and came to rest at Cleardale more than 14,000 years ago.
It will be the main element of a water feature on the site, and took a team of men, a 20 tonne digger and a good dose of ingenuity to transfer it to Methven.
Jon Harmer of Harmer Construction Limited, seen shaking his head in disbelief in one of the photos, says while he wasn’t too worried when he first saw the rock, when it was excavated and its true size revealed he wondered what he had let himself in for.
“It’s the biggest rock we’ve ever put on the truck!” he says.
The rock was too heavy for the 20 tonne digger pictured and in the end was rolled onto the truck, where it lifted the front wheels off the ground.
Bob Todhunter, says he was happy to see a part of the high country arrive in the gardens for the community to enjoy as part of a naturalistic water feature.
“The water story will be a key element inside the galleries of New Zealand’s Alpine and Agriculture Encounter. From the snow falling on the alps creating the opportunity for snowsports and alpine tourism through to the role water plays irrigating farmland on the plains, water is the key.”
“Using a piece of rock that travelled down the glaciers of the Rakaia as part of a water feature in the gardens links in to this story, as well as being a sculptural feature in its own right.”