Koch and his family live at the end of a particularly steep road on a small bush block above Hoopers Inlet. In gentle rain Koch led me to view some sizeable old rimu—among the few left on the penin­sula—and an enormous 15 m broadleaf, a species I had always thought of as a mere shrub. He has carried out plantings of natives and clearance of weeds to bolster the bush, and in one area has put in what he calls “exotic natives”—alpines, shrubs from Stewart Island and the subantarctic, even a puka from the Three Kings.