Although I didn't live quite as far up south as Rakiura, we got to see the southern aurora reasonably often, obviously normally during unusually strong sunspot activity. Although it always appeared a bit freaky, I can't remember seeing any that were mindblowing from the beauty point of view. It was usually just a kind of translucent curtain in one or maybe two colours. Like most natural phenomena, it did manage to make me feel very small and insignificant.
The worst instance of that, however, occurred once when I was riding my motorbike along a coastal road on the West Coast of the South Island. The front wheel of the bike sort of shimmeyed, and I assumed I'd ridden over a patch of oil. But then I happened to glance at the hills to my left, and they were rising and falling going south like a Mexican wave. It wasn't exaggerated or anything, but it was quite plain. An earthquake had just rolled underneath me! [gibbering wreck on two wheels -e]
