This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
45.26895° S, 170.80033° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
A storm made the Chook Tree. Two poultry farmers finished it.
In 1978 a storm tore through a macrocarpa at Waianakarua and left an unusual silhouette behind. Norman and Evelyn Clarke, who farmed poultry, looked at what remained and saw a chicken in it. Careful pruning over the years since has drawn out the full feathery form, and the tree now stands 6.6 metres as a recognisable hen – with a Moeraki boulder placed at its feet as an egg.
That last detail is what elevates it. The boulders are the famous spherical concretions from the beach up the coast at Moeraki, weathering out of the mudstone and lying in the surf; putting one under a tree shaped like a chicken is a joke that only works in North Otago, and only for someone who knows what the boulder is.
It won New Zealand Tree of the Year in 2025, which is a real award and a rather delightful one for a topiary joke that began as storm damage.
The catalogue holds it as a related record rather than a core Big Thing, because it is a living landmark rather than a fabricated object. Nobody built it. It was grown, half by weather and half by decades of patient shears, and it will keep changing – which no fibreglass animal ever does.
Macrocarpa is a Monterey cypress, another Californian import that took to New Zealand conditions and became the classic shelterbelt tree of the South Island farm.The materials: unknown.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
The New Zealand Notable Trees Trust records the landmark’s origin after a 1978 storm and subsequent pruning into a chicken form. It won New Zealand Tree of the Year in 2025. Because it is a living topiary landmark rather than a fabricated sculpture, it is catalogued as related rather than core.
ACCESS
Roadside/private-land living landmark. Exact tree coordinates are documented, but legal stopping/viewing arrangements still need verification.
