OUR AREA

The Land

The landscape of the area to the South West of the Macraes township is made up of a series of three ridges, Billys Ridge, Tairei and the Rock and Pillar.  From a vantage point as you descend from the top northern ridge of Nenthorn Rd all three ridges are visible.  Billys Ridge separates the Nenthorn and Moonlight Flat, whilst the Tairei Ridge separates Moonlight Valley from the Strath Taieri Valley.   From this vantage point in the far distance to the south the Maungatua Range is also visible which bounds the Taieri Plains.  Moonlight crosses the inconspicuous catchment divide of the Taieri and Shag Rivers. Sometimes given the appellation Moonlight Flat, an ancient lake bed formation, creates about seven square kilometres of flat land lying between Billys and Taieri Ridges.

The schist rock outcrops that predominate throughout the Macraes and surrounding landscapes have been formed from layers of sediment which compressed under the sea before becoming part of the ancient land mass of Gondwana Land.   Within the Nenthorn Valley the dominant rock becomes basalt of volcanic origin.   The smooth, rounded knobs scattered through the landscape are all volcanic with the stony soils derived from these is naturally more fertile than the schist country separating them.  A reservoir of basalt rock is found at the corner of Butter and Egg and Moonlight Rd at a location called Shark Hill which has been used as a quarry site for roading metal for a number of decades.  It is thought that Shark Shill is an ancient volcanic vent.

The district is situated in the overlap of weather conditions experienced by both coastal and central regions, but it is seldom subjected to their climatic extremes. Nor-west gales associated with the unique “Taieri Pet” cloud formation are a regular occurrence, particularly during the spring and autumn equinox, and winds from other quarters often prevail.