We are actually a little inland, about 30 km from Bluff, which could also be called “Land’s End” if you wish. Invercargill sits on an estuary. This photo is taken a block from the hospital/our house.
(“A” is the location of the hospital and our house [which will be the subject of a later post] and Bluff is at the bottom of the map).
The drive South from Invercargill was lovely. 
This is a beautiful and typical picture in New Zealand. Green green grass, contrasted by the bright yellow gorse. Here are a few other pictures from elsewhere:
What do these photos have in common? A beautiful yellow flowering shrub called gorse. Native to Western Europe, this plant was introduced as a hedge plant (for animal pastures) from Scotland, prior to Darwin’s visit in 1835. It was soon recognized as an invasive species and declared a weed by the NZ parliament in 1900. It now covers approximately 5% of the non-indigenous land surface. Millions of dollars are spent trying to control this costly invader. Incidentally — the last photo was actually taken in Ireland two years ago.
The other major color in the first photo (and most of the others) is green. This is also an introduced color. A third of the country’s surface is “improved grassland”. Early pastures were created by forest burn and clearance, followed by the introduction of European grasses.
Their pastures are exponentially nicer than my lawn at home. The countryside (at least in Southland province) is one giant lawn. With pets. And these pastures are no accident. We saw plowed fields at the end of the winter that we thought were to be planted with crops. Eventually we realized that these fields are carefully prepared, graded with heavy machinery, plowed and planted with grass. In 1928, Mr E.V. Wilcox wrote in the New Zealand Railways Magazine, “Think of New Zealand farms, not as a series of cultivated fields planted in various crops, but as perfect lawns or golf courses dotted with sheep and dairy cows.”
With that in mind, the last picture was taken specifically to illustrate this point.
Going back to the first photo on the way to the coast, the only plants in the photo that were indigenous were the reeds.
Given the emphasis on grass and sheep in this posting, I will close with this thought
SixPlacesdownunder 
