These learn-by-doing webpages, and their on-location access by tiny QR signs, can be used for any forest, ecosystem or natural feature in NZ, but they were originally designed for Tongariro National Park to promote the ecotourism industry that expected to attract 50,000 visitors annually.

The heart of this mountainous area was made sacrosanct in 1887, with the intent that the Crown would stand alongside Ngāti Tūwharetoa to ensure the continued protection of Tongariro. This led to the establishment of the Tongariro National Park in 1894, a first for New Zealand, and fourth in the world.

In 1991, it was made a UN Educational Scientific & Cultural Organisation world heritage scientific site for its multitude of unique ecosystems, and in 1993, it became the first to be made a world heritage cultural site because the mountains at the heart of the park symbolize the spiritual links between this community and its environment.

These draft examples of QR signs demonstrate an inexpensive, editable, on-the-spot and learn-by-doing way of educating visitors who walk or bike along its tracks with a hundred examples why it is such a scientific & cultural gem, when these small unobtrusive signs are placed along the tracks and scanned with cellphones. The quirky headings are designed to catch youngsters' attention, so they can then be led on to serious science.  Try scanning one now.

Large coloured information signs are expensive, obtrusive, static, and very limited in the information they give, while very few casual visitors carry books with facts about the park's plants, animals, rocks, history, weather, Maori culture etc.

Experts in many different fields could provide interesting material about trees, bushes, ferns, orchids, mosses, epiphytes, communities, zonation, evolution, birds, insects, bats, pests, how plants avoided being eaten, geography, use of different geographic features by both Maori and Europeans, geology, vulcanology, climate change, logging and railway stories, Maori foods, medicines, stories,myths, LOTR filming locations. Can you suggest any more?


Retired schoolteachers like yours truly could introduce topics by breaking them down to digestible lumps; then the students in the computer clubs at Ruapehu College and Turangi School could make the webpages. Different colours on the QR signs could indicate each field of interest.

The signs could be printed on plastic A6 size (7x10cm, $5) and mounted almost horizontally close to the ground on short stakes ($2.50) These would be cheap to make, light to carry and quick'n'easy to install.

Waitonga Falls Walk
This is walked by many people and has a wide range of habitats. If local tourism businesses finally show some interest, I will get around to making pages for the kawaka cedar with twisted trunk, the Dendroligotrichum moss with a stem and conducting tissue, the raukawa bushes that united east and west coast iwi, old track to Blyth Hut, the coral fungus, Gleichenia swamp fern, the carnivorous sundews, Che's Ruapehu waiata, Waitonga falls used as a food chiller by iwi in pre-contact times.

Mangawhero Loop Walk
This could be an option for cold wet days or school outdoor education rambles. I have info for short stops every 50 to 100 metres: various trees, ferns, mosses, liverworts, fungi and habitats, Ohakune Fault Line, tramway, the maths of measuring tree heights and volumes of dirt removed for tramway cuttings, glow-worms, hydro dam, crater, and Mollie's tutu feast!


QR Orienteering Competitions
The QR codes could be also used as target location recorders for competitive adult orienteering with maps on cellphone apps to guide competitors to each target location.

Each competitor would scan the QR code and take a selfie of her/himself beside the QR sign, and text it to the competition organiser, thus recording where and when she/he was there.

Money, Money, Money
And of cour$e, like one of Baldrick'$ cunning plan$, thi$ web$ite can be $een a$ a cunning plan to get vi$itors to the Ruapehu di$trict $pending more time on each of their walk$, and finding them more intere$ting, $o that they $tay longer, come back more often, and $pend more money on meal$, bike$ and bed$, to compen$ate for the average 12% le$$ $now Tongariro is getting each winter.

SAMPLE PAGES