Mossburn

Mossburn is a small stopover town of 180 (2023) along the way to Te Anau (and thereby Fiordland National Park) in Southland. It's not much of a destination of its own, but there have been growing efforts to make it given its prime location.

Understand
The small town of Mossburn lies east of Lake Manapouri in the Southland region. The town markets itself the deer capital of New Zealand, and this is commemorated by a large deer statue in the centre of town. After the deer released into the wild became a nuisance in the middle of the last century due to a lack of natural predators, they were intensively hunted to control their numbers. In Mossburn, around 1970, necessity was made a virtue. The wild deer continued to be hunted, and at the same time the first red deer farms were set up. This made it possible for New Zealand game to be delivered to Europe in deep-frozen, good quality form. It also served the industrial use of deer leather. The fences on deer farms can be recognised by the fact that they are around 2 m high, higher than those on sheep farms. These are declining somewhat across the country; in New Zealand the trend is more towards cattle farming and dairy farming.

Mossburn is also known nationally as the site of one of the country's first wind farms, about 6 km to the southeast on White Hill whose turbines have been turning since 2007.

Get in
Mossburn is on SH 94 which comes from Gore and Lumsden in the east and leads to Te Anau. SH 97 goes northeast from Mossburn and meets SH 6 at Five Rivers.