land & people

Southland is a land of contrasts – its people as diverse as its landscapes.

• Land area: 31,600 square kilometres, of which 23% is intensively farmed and 60% is taken up by National Parks and conservation reserves
• Population: 90,000 (2.3% of the New Zealand population), over half of whom (50,000) live in the city of Invercargill

"When it comes to landscapes, Southland's most enduring image is that of stretching plains filled with well-groomed farmland, green the year round, where sheep and other stock contentedly graze. The backdrop for this comforting pastoral scene is an arc of mountains white-crowned in winter, beyond which lie some of the remotest, wildest, least-inhabited environments in New Zealand." [Neville Peat, in Murihiku – The Southland Story]