Navigate Initiative
August 25, 2026
August 2026
The stone outside the unit
For four or five years, a large block of Oamaru stone sat on the grass outside Pathway's Navigate Unit at Christchurch Men's Prison.
Someone had started carving a lizard into it, then stopped. The half-finished shape sat there, weathering, walked past every day.
One of the Tū Ora in the unit is a keen carver. At some point he looked at the stone and saw what the first carver had seen. So he picked up where they left off.
He did more than finish it. The lizard became a tuatara, every scale worked by hand into the soft Oamaru stone. Beneath it he carved a log and stained it dark, so the tuatara sits pale against it, the natural white of the stone doing the rest. The claws grip the wood. The eye catches the light. What was an abandoned outline is now the first thing you notice on the lawn.
This Tū Ora is whakamā (embarrassed) about the attention. He does not want a pedestal and he does not really want to talk about it. He carves because he likes the process, and because the work is personal. For him, it is part of his own journey, not a display piece.
We will be honest. We loved this. We wanted to write about him, to celebrate the skill and the patience and the hours it took. He would rather we didn't. So we won't. This is a story about a carving, and the carver stays out of it.
The stone had been given up on for the better part of five years. Now it is the pride of the front lawn.
So look at the carving.
Names have been changed.
