Reclaimation by Nature

I love visiting places where man's influence is being slowly replaced by what nature intended.

Over Easter weekend, we took a trip up to the Coromandel Peninsula on New Zealand's North Island. It's an area that has been quite heavily mined for gold in the past (and to some degree even now) so there are a lot of relics of old mines around.

We visited the Karangahake Gorge, once the site of a large gold mining operation. While some of the tunnels, tracks, etc. are being preserved by the Dept. of Conservation, you can see where nature is taking its course.

Ferns and other plants are sprouting up in cracks in the old walls.

It's an interesting juxtaposition of man made and natural environments.