It was the rock that rolled - all the way across a busy Napier road.
Ground-softening rain on Friday night appears to be responsible for dislodging a 1-metre by 70cm boulder from near the top of a hill on land above Church Rd.
In the early hours of Saturday morning the rock tumbled down the hill, smashed through a fence, rumbled across Church Rd and came to rest about 5m over the kerb.
Its new resting place is about 30m from the back fence of nearby Summerset retirement village.
Merlot Drive resident Yvonne Laing said she heard a noise about 1am, which she thought must have been a car hitting the kerb at the nearby roundabout, "which they sometimes do, so I didn't think any more about it. In the morning, we saw the big rock there."