Fortification

Living in Fortification

Fortification is a Southland locality in the hill farming country south of Gore, carrying the military vocabulary name that the Crimean War era and the colonial period's enthusiasm for defensive terminology scattered across New Zealand's geography. The name refers to a hill formation or topographical feature in the locality that the early settlers considered sufficiently castle-like or militarily-shaped to justify the reference, in the tradition of naming landscape features for what they resembled rather than for what they were.

The hill farming country around Fortification runs the southern Southland hill model: sheep and cattle on the rounded faces, with the pastoral landscape that the rolling country south of Gore and east toward the coast produces. The locality sits in the hill country between the Mataura Valley farming land and the coastal districts, with the farming families running the operations that the terrain's pastoral potential supports.

The permanent population is the farming families on the surrounding hill stations and properties, with Gore providing the nearest full services and the schools that the locality's children attend. The hill country here has the open pastoral character of southern Southland's rolling terrain, with the native bush remnants in the steeper gullies providing the ecological margin that the farming landscape maintains.

Fortification is Southland hill farming on the land that resembled a fortification to someone in the 1860s and has been growing sheep ever since.

Schools & Enrolment Zones in Fortification

Schools in zone for Fortification

Children living in Fortification have a guaranteed right to enrol at these school, based on Ministry of Education home zones.

• Southland Adventist Christian School

  Full Primary · roll 123 · decile 4

Check your school zone

Fortification Weather

Current conditions: 6.8°C, overcast clouds

Fortification Community