UPPER MOUTERE - NEW ZEALAND

The ancient land of New Zealand sits on the Southern edge of the Pacific Ocean wedged between Australia's South-Easterly coast and the icy wilderness of Antarctica, far away from the Eastern coast of South America. For many millions of years New Zealand has remained completely isolated from the known world - an undiscovered and pristine paradise untouched by man due to its remote and isolated location deep in the Southern reaches of the Pacific Ocean, which continues to protect its air, land and water to this day.

Less than one thousand years ago and long after formation of the Moutere aquifer the first Maori warriors, lead by the stars across the empty expanse of the Southern Pacific Ocean, discovered New Zealand's North Island. Later they moved on to the South Island, the last major landmass to be discovered on the face of the earth. It was only then that the Maori first laid eyes on the bountiful and picturesque home of Moutere, which translates to island in the local Maori dialect. However these Maori explorers could not see the area's remarkable secret as the ancient glacial waters of the Moutere aquifer would remain hidden deep underground for centuries to come.

The home of Moutere in the hills that surround Tasman Bay on New Zealand's South Island was settled for the second time, this by by Europeans, in the 1830's and little has changed since those early days - the landscape still dotted only by the occasional farmhouse and orchard all ringed by the Abel Tasman, Kahurangi and Mount Richmond National Parks. 

In recent years some of the local farmers, including the Johnstone family whom have for four generations and over a century farmed their property, were suffering water shortages and began searching for new water sources. Wells were drilled at a range of depths. However when these reached half a kilometre below the earth's surface they discovered a reservoir of ancient glacial waters -  the fossil waters of the Moutere Aquifer which is among the world's oldest and most pure water deposits.