This surely has to be one of the most beautiful shipping containers in the world! Flora and fauna in extravagant colours and patterns adorn the whole side of the container. Its a flamboyant fantasy; a vivid and vibrant paradise of recognisable creatures flaunting unearthly colours among psychedelic foliage. The container sits immediately outside The Pantry in South City, Invercargill.
The Pantry | South City Invercargill, Southland, New Zealand
Photos taken by Liz 23 June 2018.
Related Posts: Community Garden | Open Day | The Bright Room | Peeking Into The Pantry – This post is Part Five of “Colour My Community” –
Colourful Creation – Bold, Beautiful, Brilliant!
The theme of the mural is “the basket that feeds everyone”. Its on a 40ft container.
Above: The bird near the bottom is our native songbird, the tui. The end of the container is also painted but was in full sun so I didn’t photograph it.
View along most of the container length.
I’d expect that the blue bird is a morepork and the lower bird is a takahe.
The bird at the bottom is a kakapo (one of the common names for this is owl-parrot). There are ONLY 149 of these left. They only occur in New Zealand. I’d encourage you to find out more about the kakapo – its a real character. Here’s a good place to start, at the NZ Department of Conservation KAKAPO PAGE
Maori woven flax kete and various kinds of seafood
Our native pigeon and above to the far right is a kingfisher.
In the centre of this photo is a beautiful fantail.
The mural was designed by Esther Libeau who traced the design onto the container and then it was coloured in by school students. Here’s a link to a news article about it.
YouTube video featuring Esther Libeau talking about the mural
Text and Photos by Liz; Exploring Colour (2018)
Exploring Colour 
I read the post and stayed thinking about the children in a near future
working art together with many people where I live. Some do and did
other kind of art. Many can get inspiration by all the eco~~logical points
about this art in NZ!
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Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me urzre!
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Such a lovely mural, Liz. It made me smile. 😊
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Awesome! Thanks Tanja!
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Fabulous. What a lovely project for all those schoolkids.
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Its lovely isn’t it? It makes me happy that they were able to pull it off with such a nice end result!
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Beautiful a lot!
Children would love to work something like this!
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Thank you urzre, I’m sure they had a lot of fun!
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What a wonderful and comprehensive collection of our flora and fauna. How proud those children must feel every time they pass it.
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I hope they do feel proud Wendy!
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This container is breathtakingly beautiful! I read an edited version of the post to Benjamin. When I read the last sentence about the artist tracing the mural and the students coloring it, he said : “This is the bestest, most humongous coloring book in the world!” These school children will never forget this amazing experience of doing something for their community. We are off to visit the links that you kindly included. Thank-you x 2!!
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Dear Ellen, 6.30am here and I’ve just arisen and opened WP in bleary fashion. Haven’t even made our cuppa yet! But your comment is a tonic and an encouragement to me. Thanks so much! I just love this colourful container and the whole concept of what they’ve done and achieved 🙂
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Hmmmm ok I need a sea container like this. Mine is painted grey. I wonder if hubby would throw a wobbly if I did a mural….
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An opportunity for creativity there Nat! Maybe you could design and paint it together? Or take one side each, that could be fun too!
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Fascinating! A terrific idea with the container and I read the interesting articles about the kakapo. Wouldn’t it be exciting to discover some on the mainland!
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Thank you for reading about the kakapo Jane! Its always possible to discover things here which makes things exciting. However the modern character of NZ makes things so complicated. Stoats, ferrets, weasels, rats, mice, cursed possums from oz, dogs, cats make life pretty much impossible for a ground-dwelling bird like the kakapo. They’ve even had problems at Orokonui which has a pest-proof fence but we get snow in winter sometimes and then it wasn’t so pest-proof with tragic results to saddlebacks they had there. Its so darn difficult! I’m sure you know all this anyway Jane, but just sayin’
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