Stewart Island, a large island just south of the South Island, was the canoe's anchor. It is a geologically active country, with several active volcanoes in the North Island, and frequent earthquakes. It is very mountainous, the mountains having appeared very recently in geological time, and continue to grow. Its normal vegetation everywhere below the alpine regions is rainforest, with perhaps some minor areas of grassland. There are no native land mammals, save for some bats.
Land animals are limited to reptiles, like frogs and the tutara, and birds.
This surely refers to its topography of high, jagged mountains which are only a couple of million years old. But there are rocks in New Zealand that are modestly old, dating back beyond the Cambrian Period, when hard-shelled life is first found in abundance. Although when New Zealand is compared with places like Australia, even its oldest rocks seem young. Between the time of formation of those oldest rocks and now, New Zealand has had a very complex history. It becomes difficult to talk of New Zealand as a single entity.