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The onset of fever is quick. The bug goes straight in and buries deep. It can hit like flu, transmitted through words and touch. "Have a look at this," goldsmith Rob Heydelaar said, passing a thumb-sized vial half full of rattling yellow crumbs. Some were as thin as fingernail clippings, others plump like grains of rice but misshapen, like tears of solder splattered from the iron.
Tararuas
Pine natives
Kiwi in the Murchison Mountains
Up to 94 per cent of young wild kiwi perish, and although adult birds are fairly long-lived, their numbers are falling by an estimated 6 per cent a year. At this rate, wild kiwi will become extinct in the North and South Islands within a human lifetime. The Department of Conservation (DoC)—like the country at large—is highly concerned. One of the principal killers of young kiwi is Mustela erminea—the stoat. Controlling stoats is not easy. They are intelligent, highly mobile, suspicious, and fussy when it comes to being tempted by baits. Yet for the sake of kiwi and a lot of other native birds, we have to get on top of them. In 2002, DoC started a low-intensity but large-scale operation to control stoats in the Murchison Mountains. These form a 51,000 ha peninsula on the western side of Lake Te Anau. Protected on three sides by the lake and on the fourth side by remoteness, the area is home to a number of increasingly scarce native birds. Most famous is the takahe, but also present are mohua, blue duck, kea, kaka, kakariki, New Zealand falcon, weka, rock wren, tomtit, tui, bellbird, fantail, rifleman, grey warbler, brown creeper, silver-eye, pipit—and kiwi. The kiwi found there has been identified over the last couple of years as a distinct variety, referred to as the northern Fiordland tokoeka. Indeed, it is now recognised that a number of related but genetically divergent varieties are clustered in the south-western corner of the country—the Stewart Island tokoeka, the southern Fiordland tokoeka (found from Wilmot Pass south), the northern Fiordland tokoeka and the Haast tokoeka. Glaciation over the last few million years probably split an ancestral species into a series of isolated populations from Haast south. In the Murchison Mountains stoat-control operation, 730 Fenn traps are set at 200 m intervals to make 120 km of trap lines no more than 2 km apart over a 15,000 ha area. The traps are serviced quarterly. In 2003, 175 stoats were caught; in 2004, 149. February is the best month for catching stoats, because juveniles are out and about. In both years, about 80 were caught in that month alone. In May 2003, within the stoat control area and with financial help from the Bank of New Zealand Kiwi Recovery Trust, a project to monitor how the operation was affecting kiwi was established on a 1450 ha swathe along Mystery Burn. A comparative site outside the stoat-trapping area, along Snag Burn, has been set up more recently. Kiwi are "called in" at night (using taped calls and a shepherd's dog whistle), netted and measured. Males have a radio transmitter attached to a leg with hospital identification bands. The transmitters weigh 20 g, have a life expectancy of 14 months and emit 40 radio pulses a minute. Transmitter signals are checked weekly with a receiver. A signal coming from the same spot three weeks in a row indicates nesting, and nests are checked for young once a "hatch window" (70 days from the first possible lay date) has been calculated. Each chick has a 6 g transmitter attached to one of its legs before 8 days of age, at which stage most leave the nest area for good. In the breeding season July 2003 to mid-February 2004,10 male kiwi near Mystery Burn (where stoats are trapped) were monitored. One died early in the season. Another (with help from a female partner!) produced a chick that survived, while a third couple's chick was killed or scavenged by a possum at four days old. Two formed partnerships that between them resulted in three infertile eggs, and the other birds didn't breed at all. No evidence of stoat predation was found, yet only one chick was raised from what was, in effect, nine pairs of adults. Hardly an impressive reproductive record. Heavy snowfalls may have discouraged breeding that season—several of the birds lived above the tree line—as may a strong earthquake that rattled the area. During the 2004-2005 breeding season—still in progress at the time of writing—results have been a little different. In the Snag Burn area (where stoats are not trapped), two infertile eggs were laid and two chicks were killed by stoats within a fortnight of leaving their burrows. One more chick hatched in early February and is being watched closely using a "mortality transmitter", which changes from 40 to 80 pulses per minute should the chick stop moving for 12 hours—a probable indication of death. At Mystery Burn, two chicks have hatched and look likely to survive to adulthood, one chick died in the egg halfway through incubation, and a kea destroyed another nest with egg. Since these few chicks account for most, if not all, of the progeny produced by 10-12 males and their partners across both areas, productivity is clearly very low. This means it will take quite a few years for sufficient numbers to accumulate to reassure the stoat-control workers that the measures they are taking are benefiting kiwi. The team plans to catch more adult males this year to boost the sample size. Megan Willans, DoC's overseer for the project, raises another concern when she comments: "We have not had a mast seeding of beech yet, and we may find that during mast summers the level of control is not enough. But this may not be a problem if enough chicks get through in the non-mast years. As you can see, we are working with a complicated web of ecological forces." Indeed. It's not easy for kiwi. Or for those who are trying to help them.
Yellow-bellied visitor convalescing
One of New Zealand's more unusual hospital patients has poisonous fangs and enough venom to kill several humans. It is a yellow-bellied sea snake (Pelamis platurus) that washed ashore, injured, at Muriwai beach early in June 2004. The snake is now convalescing in a hospital tank, maintained at a balmy 23°C, at Kelly Tarlton's Antarctic Encounter and Underwater World in Auckland. Once a week the curator, Andrew Christie, and his colleagues remove the snake from its tank, weigh it and feed it. A large lesion on its side has healed and the animal has put on weight. The animal has regained its natural "nervous" disposition and can bite, so staff are very wary when handling it. Perhaps the snake's nervous temperament is related to its lifestyle, for unlike the more than 50 other species of sea snake, which remain close to shore, the yellow-bellied snake spends its entire life in the open ocean. It is the world's most widely distributed snake, found in warm waters from the east coast of Africa to the west coast of the Americas. Yellow-bellied sea snakes travel with surface currents, which, where they converge, tend to form drift lines, or slicks—long masses of floating seaweed and debris. The snakes gather and breed among the slicks. Congregations can range from a few individuals to thousands. The species is ovoviviparous—fertilized eggs hatch, and young develop, in utero. Baby snakes (2-6 per brood) are born able to swim. The snake has a flat body profile and paddle-shaped tail—adaptations for a life at sea that render it incapable of moving on land. Slicks are also home to dense concentrations of planktonic organisms, marine mammals and fish. The snakes hide in ambush among the weed where fish congregate. Schools of fish have been observed to gather directly under groups of snakes, which probably resemble floating sticks. One approach to the capture of prey involves a biting frenzy, in which a snake enters a school of fish and indiscriminately bites everything in its path. A pair of hollow fangs at the top front of the mouth injects venom. The prey is then manoeuvred so that it can be swallowed head-first. Four rows of backward-curving teeth hold it during swallowing. The ligaments that hold the jaws together are quite flexible, allowing the lower jaw to dislocate so that large prey can be ingested. Typically one side disengages at a time, and the jaw "walks" the food backwards into the mouth. To hunt for food the snakes must spend considerable periods beneath the surface, and this requires good breath-holding ability. Indeed, sea snakes can spend over two hours underwater between breaths. This ability is partly due to efficient skin breathing. Up to one-third of a yellow-bellied sea snake's oxygen and three-quarters of its expired carbon dioxide diffuse through the skin, significantly extending dive times. The convalescing yellow-bellied sea snake requires human assistance to feed, so the aquarists at Kelly Tarlton's have developed a special diet and technique. One person holds the snake while another puts food in its mouth using forceps. The snake is fed sprats, triplefins and a high-protein formula used for sick cats, Hill's A/D Prescription Diet. Strong welding gloves protect the feeders' hands from the deadly 2-4 mm-long fangs. A single bite from a yellow‑bellied sea snake injects enough venom to kill a child or young adult. However, a sea-snake bite need not spell immediate death or illness. The majority of bite victims survive with no serious consequences. In The Biology of Sea Snakes, Alistair Reid, a veteran of two snake bites, describes a number of incidents in Malaysia, where he found bites were usually the result of an accident, such as a fisherman touching a snake while handling or clearing a net, or a wader treading on one. Few bites resulted in serious poisoning because little or no venom was injected. Snakes that were milked after "defensive" biting retained much of their venom. Most of the victims in the records suffered principally from the effects of fright. Yellow-bellied sea snakes are carried to northern New Zealand by warm subtropical currents in the western Pacific, such as the Tasman Current, a broad, meandering flow that receives tropical water from the East Australian Current. Brian Gill, curator of land vertebrates at Auckland War Memorial Museum, has studied records of sea-snake landings in New Zealand. Yellow-bellied sea snakes regularly wash ashore along both sides of the northern end of the North Island—perhaps two to three per year. The total number of landings by all species of sea snake is probably ten times this number. Eighty per cent of snakes found have been alive. The black-and-white-banded Laticauda colubrina is another species that turns up in New Zealand waters, although sightings are rare. It lays its eggs in mangrove swamps or among rocks along the shoreline. One was discovered in the Waihou River near Te Aroha in 1945, 20 km inland. Generally, the sea around New Zealand is too cold for these tropical creatures. Brian Gill believes that many of the sea snakes that wash up on our beaches are dying from the cold. What does the future hold for the hospitalised snake? Andrew Christie told me that he would like to release it back into the wild once it has fully recovered, but this will require approval from DoC. Details are still being finalised. In the meantime, our sea-snake guest will continue to receive first-class New Zealand hospitality.
They shoot horses—don't they?
Under the heading "Animal Pests" on the Department of Conservation's (DoC) website, and sandwiched between "Judas Workshop 2002" and "Mustelids", can be found a management plan for the wild horses of the Kaimanawa Mountains, animals many regard as honorary natives. Developed by the Kaimanawa Wild Horse Working Party, this considers three possible approaches to the management of the animals, and also discusses population control of the herd. The first option is to maintain a manageable population in the area the horses occupy. The second is to maintain a herd in the southern or south-western zone of the current range. The third is to relocate the herd to a new area. Each option is evaluated in a matrix that considers the effects on the ecosystem the horses inhabit (particularly on rare native plants) and on public and equine safety. For years there has been a conflict between the welfare of the horses and the well-being of plants in the native grasslands the horses roam. However, according to Bill Fleury, DoC's technical support manager in the Wanganui conservancy, the analyses are complicated by effects of the horses on the Kaimanawa flora will not be clearly understood for another 40-50 years. Some monitoring of plant life is being carried out by the army, and there is ongoing research into the state of red tussock in the area. Data have only been collected for a few years—too little for trends to merge. "Some plants seem to be thriving while others are not," says Fleury. Little more can be concluded. DoC's preferred option is to shift the horses out of the northern zone of the Waiouru military training area, and in the June 2004 muster 27 horses were removed. "The northern Waiouru military training area has the most important environmental conservancy values and is the most fragile, and it is at higher altitude and less modified," says Fleury. "So that area will be managed as a horse-free zone—a zero-density area. It usually has first priority when we're mustering. If there are horses there, we try and get them out." Originally, DoC proposed shooting the northern horses; however, after receiving submissions opposed to this course, it settled on mustering them instead. Horses still roam on private land in the north and east. Another 198 horses were removed from the Argo management zone and adjacent Awapatu catchment in the June muster, leaving a herd of about 500 to roam over 20,000-25,000 ha. Since DoC's first muster in 1993, 2647 horses have been removed from the ranges. The largest muster was in 1997, when 1069 horses were removed, but this was exceptional. Most years only 100 or so have been taken, although the number has increased to about 200 over the last three years. Some of those outside DoC who have handled Kaimanawa horses have never been happy with the decision to remove the northern animals. Horse trainer Robyn Sisley says these are the "real" Kaimanawa horses. "The northern area is more remote, and there have been no domesticated horses let loose there. Now we are going to lose the purity of the breed, which is a tragedy." Sisley, with her dressage instructor, Heike Ehrlenbach, trained 50 horses from the 1997 muster with a view to preparing them for new homes, although not many were keen to take them. "There was a negative preconception about them, that they were wild-looking and ill-behaved. It made people reluctant to get one," says Ehrlenbach. "But a lot of the time you can't tell the difference between a trained Kaimanawa and a show pony." Bay of Plenty rider Hannah Eagle is one who has dispelled the stereotype of the untamable Kaimanawa horse. She is the 12-year-old owner of Kaimai Keeper, a 13.2-hand bay mare. The pair have just made the Bay of Plenty Pony Club team—Eagle is the youngest rider to have been selected—and are successfully show jumping. However, not all relocated Kaimanawa horses go on to do so well. Some people who initially expressed an interest in taking a mustered animal did so for altruistic reasons, says Sisley, and had little or no experience with horses. Consequently some relocated animals weren't handled for a number of years, leading to calls to organisations such as the Kaimanawa Wild Horse Welfare Trust (KWHWT) requesting the horses be rehomed yet again. Because the horses were wild, their senses are very acute, says Sisley. "Their brains are still active, and they are switched-on horses." Ehrlenbach agrees: "They are smarter than the average domesticated horse and they have better instincts," she says. "Natural horsemanship techniques work really well with these horses. Trying to dominate them doesn't work; you need to work with the horse, get it to cooperate with you, rather than you dominating it." KWHWT chairman Elder Jenks and welfare officer Marilyn Jenks say part of the problem with rehoming has been that homes haven't always been checked first. In some cases, say the Jenks, it would have been more humane to shoot the horses immediately after the muster than place them in what turned out to be unsuitable homes. From the 2005 muster onwards, three organisations will be responsible for the rehoming of mustered horses, say the Jenks. But it is not that easy to find good homes, and pro-horse groups would like to see other humane solutions to the herd's perpetual growth. In the meantime, DoC is continuing to investigate ways of managing the population and minimising the horses' impact on the ecology of the Kaimanawas. Immuno-contraception is one approach that has been considered, although it is more expensive than mustering. Injecting a mare with a protein extracted from pig ova causes its immune system to produce antibodies that block fertilisation for about a year. However, there are significant associated costs and difficulties, says Fleury. Research carried out in the mid-1990s has also raised questions about the effectiveness of immuno-contraception, although the quality of the vaccine used in the trial was suspect. A follow-up study became embroiled in further controversy after a number of horses to be used for the research died or were shot on an Ohingaiti, Waikato property. They were undernourished, and their plight was highlighted on TV3's 20/20, which featured footage showing them to be bony and exhausted. None of the parties involved—MAF, DoC, the farm owner, the Veterinary Association or Massey University—appeared willing to take responsibility for the animals. Fleury says new research on an improved immuno-contraception technique may reduce the cost, although expense is likely to remain an issue for DoC. Difficulty of administration is another possible obstacle. To administer the vaccine, Fleury argues, the entire herd would need to be mustered, in contrast to the approximately 20 per cent mustered each year. KWHWT's Diane Sealey disputes this, pointing out that DoC already musters more than 20 per cent of the herd annually. "If 97 mares were vaccinated (the number mustered for the 1995 vaccine trial', and the vaccine was only 90 per cent effective," she says, "it would almost halve the number of horses needing to be removed the following year." For now, the Kaimanawa horses are in a holding pattern. DoC's plan calls for annual musters to restrict the herd to 500 animals, while organisations such as KWHWT will continue to search for good homes for the horses that are uprooted from the wild each year.
If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's probably not even a small aquatic bird—that's the message from the European Space Agency concerning Saturn's moon, Titan, which has a surface that bears a stunning physical likeness to Earth but little else. On January 15 (NZT), more than a billion kilometres from Earth, the ESA's Huygens Probe successfully parachuted through a thick, hazy atmosphere to land without incident on pumpkin-coloured Titan. Photographs show a terrain molded by deceptively earth-like geophysical processes, but these processes operate in alien conditions (temperatures are below -170° C). Settling close to a "shoreline" where hills rise out of a flat darker expanse, the probe relayed a wealth of data to the orbiting craft Cassini. The landing surface—probed by Huygens' instruments—has been described by ESA scientists as "wet sand—the consistency of creme brulee." Onboard instruments also detected bursts of methane gas boiling out of the surface as the craft warmed the ground with which it was in contact. Titan's atmosphere is rich in organic compounds, formed by the interaction of methane with sunlight. The result is a smog similar to that found over large, heavily polluted cities. The moon surface appears crater-free, implying an active geology. There is clear evidence of precipitation, erosion, mechanical abrasion and other fluvial activity, but where many of the geophysical processes look terrestrial, the chemistry involved is spectacularly different. Rather than liquid water, Titan has liquid methane, which wells up in springs or falls as rain. This precipitation is channeled into river systems that empty into lakebeds, strongly similar to Earth's. Titan's rivers and lakes seem to be dry at the moment, but it is likely that liquids were present recently. Hard water-ice, in pebble and boulder form, dots the landscape, the Earthly equivalent of silicate rocks, and hydrocarbon particles settling out of the atmosphere are a stand-in for dirt. There is also evidence of active volcanism, but the Titanian volcanoes issue very cold ice and ammonia rather than lava.
Kiwis in Korea: When the Cold War ran hot
The search for Terra Australis Incognita and the discovery of Zeelandia Novia.
Oi mate
This is no typical conservation story. The grey-faced petrel/great-winged petrel/North Island muttonbird/oi is not endangered—not by any means. Grey-faced petrels breed from the Three Kings Islands down to East Cape, mostly on offshore islands, although there are a few populations on headlands of both east and west mainland coasts. They are preyed on by the usual villains—ferrets, stoats, cats and pigs—while stock can trample their burrows; and they make a fine main course for humans—traditional harvests still take place in some areas. Despite such pressures, though, they remain plentiful. However, as part of the rehabilitation of 37 ha Matakohe/Limestone Island in Whangarei Harbour, it has been decided to try to establish a population of grey-faced petrels there. An undertaking by Friends of Matakohe/Limestone Island (FOMLI), the project involves housing chicks in artificial burrows, where it is hoped they will fledge before taking off on their big overseas experience—typically a seven-year jaunt—and eventually making their way back to the island to breed. Chicks were collected for translocation in late 2004 from Taranga Island, in the Hen and Chicken group, and more are to be transferred over the next four years. Landing at Dragon's Mouth Cove on Taranga Island at first light, we are ferried ashore in an inflatable boat hauled by a rope-and-pulley system. The group assembles on the beach for a karakia led by our Ngatiwai representative, Phil Heteraka. The Maori name oi comes from the high-pitched call the birds make during flight. I ask Phil what the Maori is for "extraction from the burrow". I draw a blank look, but a quick cellphone call to a family member on the mainland reveals that "tongia te manu oi" is what we are here to do today. Our military-style briefing begins. If a chick has left its nest, we also leave it; handle chicks like this; traverse the terrain sideways. We are shown the series of burrows that were located, "GPS'd", marked, mapped, coded and recorded during a five-day operation at the end of October. The six people involved checked over 1000 burrows to find 50 suitable chicks. Only one-third of the burrows were accessible without excavation, and these were renovated with a rock lid to make the extraction of chicks easier. In addition to standard-issue white gloves, we are given bum bags containing all necessary tools for pulling chicks. Given that four out of five of them will projectile vomit soon after being removed from their burrows, it's an unenviable task. We are instructed to point the birds' heads away from us. Our first and second chicks are located and boxed within minutes. They are surprisingly plump (490 g) for their 70-80 days of age, with a distinctive curved bill. Blood will be drawn more than once during the day. Passing a tangle of supplejack, Phil is inspired to demonstrate a traditional harvesting method. His knife is out, the end of a length of vine is splayed to form an oi spear, and within moments he has caught a bird. The scramble up the side of Taranga Island is extremely hard work as the land is steep and lush coastal broadleaf forest covers every inch. A group of burrows along the top ridge borders a Maori burial ground—a no-go zone. We are told that over the years hundreds of bodies have been lowered into crevices along here. It's an eerie feeling to think that the remains of so many lie so close. A point 350 m up is our base for the day. White boxes are assembled, lined with shredded paper and stuffed into backpacks ready to ferry chicks back to the large rock from which a helicopter will collect them later in the day. The correct way to extract a chick from a burrow is by the bill, although it looks uncomfortable for the bird. Some of the burrows need to be enlarged, as the chicks have grown so fat. They lose weight before they are capable of flying. A solid day's toil amasses the 40 chicks required to tenant the new man-made burrows on Limestone Island. The birds are quickly loaded into a cargo net for their first flight—a brief hop down to the lighthouse, where they are packed inside the chopper. Project team leader Colin Bishop gives a howl of delight as he watches the birds disappear. For the last nine years Matakohe/Limestone Island has had a human population of one—a resident ranger, Colin Bishop. However, this isn't a true indication of its human history. The first people to live here were Ngaitahuhu, in the early 1700s, and the island has since hosted a flax-processing plant and a lime works. The country's first bag of Portland cement was produced here. FOMLI hopes to return the island to coastal broadleaf forest and restore its pre-human fauna. Planting days are organised with help from the local community and schools, and 10,000-20,000 native trees sourced from the surrounding ecological area are planted every year. Fern birds, New Zealand dotterels, variable oystercatchers, banded rails and flax snails inhabit the island. North Island brown kiwi have been reintroduced, the island serving as a crèche for the Bank of New Zealand kiwi recovery programme Operation Nest Egg. The kiwi population hit 20 recently with the hatching of Ahi Kaa ("Keep the home fires burning"), the first kiwi chick to hatch on the island. Today the island is abuzz with activity and anticipation. Committee members have taken time off work, while school children, iwi representatives and other locals have all been ferried across from the mainland. After today the oi will belong to two iwi: Ngatiwai, from Taranga, and Te Parawhau, the people of Matakohe/ Limestone Island. Members of Ngatiwai accompany them in the chopper and formally hand them over to Te Parawhau as part of the welcome ceremony. Helen Gummer from DoC is on hand to perform a health check and unload the precious cargo. An authority on petrels, she has been brought in as a temporary island resident. Wallace Heteraka explains the importance of scales to a fish, and how three symbolic scales—a plant, a feather and a rock—have been brought from Taranga Island to stay with the birds on Matakohe Island. Te Ihi Tito (Te Parawhau) says, amid giggles and general laughter, "Thanks, Ngatiwai, for bringing the of from Taranga to Matakohe. I won't have to go so far to get a good feed! They taste good, and even though now isn't the time, hopefully one day the massive increase in numbers will allow harvesting." Those in charge of the chicks are concerned that the formal proceedings have kept them cooped up too long. The birds are transported towards the top of the island to a corrugated iron lean-to, where they are measured, weighed and rehydrated. Their new homes, numbered 1 to 40 in a buried plywood and plastic apartment-style complex, face straight down the harbour towards Taranga. Helen Gummer will live on site over the coming weeks to oversee the hand-rearing of the chicks until they fledge. "I find it a privilege to use my skills for this project because it really is a community project run by the island trust and fully supported by local schoolchildren, environmental groups, iwi, DoC and the World‑wide Fund for Nature."
To the centre of the earth
In the summer of 1885 William Larnach, the newly appointed minister of mines, boarded a steamer in Dunedin and set out for Hokitika on the first stage of a gruelling inspection tour that would take in much of the South Island. By horse, by rail, on land and sea, Larnach and his party doggedly pressed forward, over mountain passes and across the boulder-strewn rivers of Westland; to Kumara, Nelson and isolated, roadless Collingwood, then on to Christchurch and the Wilberforce River, and finally to the goldfields of Otago. Accompanying Larnach in the ministerial party was a world authority on mining, Professor James Black of the University of Otago's School of Mines, whose manual Chemistry for the Goldfields (1885) was to become a bible for "the diggers and miners of New Zealand" to whom it was dedicated. The School of Mines had been set up six years earlier at the urging of the provincial superintendent, with the aim of instructing miners in the fundamentals of chemistry and mineralogy. By then the easily won alluvial gold that had fuelled the gold rushes of the 1860s had long gone, and a new era of intensive recovery involving quartz mining, sluicing and dredging had begun. It was time for miners to get technical. The Otago School of Mines was a long way from the action, though, and despite the presence of its director, George Ulrich—the "best mining expert south of the equator" in the opinion of the Lyttelton Times—and Black's enthusiastic, showman-like lectures, student numbers were low. Larnach's solution was to have lecturers take their knowledge out to the mining districts. On the 1885 tour, Black was surprised to find more than 1600 men ready and willing to meld theory with practice. In the course of eight weeks he delivered more than 40 lectures on geology, chemistry and scientific methods of ore extraction. In the long vacations over the next two years he repeated the exercise, discovering such a demand for this form of technical education that it was decided to establish local schools of mines the length and breadth of the country to offer elementary courses for mine managers, battery superintendents, essayists and engine drivers. Larnach returned from his first tour with a good knowledge of gold mining, which, though it had declined from the record 16,100 kg of gold recovered in 1865, still managed to recover a more difficult 6200 kg in 1885. He also came back with a high opinion of West Coast coal, which was used in vast quantities for steamships and trains. Larnach considered it superior to coal from Newcastle. "There can be no doubt that there is an enormous store of wealth in the minerals of New Zealand," he reported in his overview of mining in the colony. "The agricultural and pastoral interests I do not wish to detract from...but it is the mineral product, the development of which will cause this country to stand in a foremost position in this respect in Australasia." With coal production set to rise dramatically, and with new gold-extraction techniques being pioneered out in the field, the local schools were to have a full workload. The largest and most prestigious of these schools is still with us, its cluster of buildings meticulously restored by new owner the Historic Places Trust and open for inspection. To step through the door of the Thames School of Mines Mineralogical Museum, sandwiched between the town and the Firth of Thames, in the shadow of the gold-rich Coromandel Range, is to enter another world. Inside the concrete building, with its 1950s stucco dressing, are paraded the obsessions of another age. Though no students have crossed its threshold for 50 years, the lofty 20metre-long museum still exudes the late-Victorian enthusiasm for order and display. Encased in long glass cabinets are serried ranks of neatly labelled rock samples, testifying that this is one of Australasia's most important mineralogical museums. The tag for one nondescript bar of dull metal reads, "Bullion from Sb softener before running to Zinc pan"; another, "Slag from Antimony-Lead blast furnace"—the liberal capitals betraying a reverence for the very stuff of the earth. And very useful some of that stuff is. Antimony sulphide, for example—which the museum has in a rare fan formation —expands when cool, so was used in the print industry to lock moveable type in place. At every turn are minerals unknown to any but the most devout rock hound. Who could guess at "Goodletite", for instance, a rock studded with delicate rubies that is named after Black's assistant, Wallie Goodlet, and found only in Westland? Then there is a sample of gold deposited on galena, a lead ore, which reflects light at a wavelength that makes the gold appear white. In charge is the genial John Isdale, who has been poking about the place since he was seven years old. Many inappropriate items have been removed from the collection. "Fijian war clubs aren't really what you want in a mineralogical museum," he says. Much remains, including small scales for weighing gold and intricate teaching models of stamper batteries, built at a model-making factory in Freiberg, Germany, and a patent safety cage. Isdale's father, Alistair, became curator in 1956, two years after the School of Mines closed, running it as a concession for the local council. At the age of 89 he was still to be seen riding to the museum, sporting a distinctive pink fluorescent helmet. His 10,000 pages of research on local mining history are now held at the Turnbull Library. By wandering about the museum's reference collection it is possible to gain an insight into the geology of the Coromandel. Most of the gold lies in rich "bonanza" veins separated by quartz. Often keeping the gold company are pyrite (fool's gold), calcite (sometimes tinged pink by manganese), rhodonite, rhodocrosite and a scattering of other minerals. Some gold is associated with sulphides of iron, lead, copper and zinc. There are also a host of exotically named minerals lying about with the sulphides, including azurite, cuprite, malachite, anglesite, realgar and limonite. The ores from some lodes couldn't be extracted by the simple expedient of brutal crushing followed by amalgamation with mercury, as could the bonanza veins, so in the early years more than half of the gold mined was lost. It was only with the introduction of the cyanide extraction process in 1892 that the ores could be made to yield up most of their gold. James Park, who became director of the Thames School of Mines in 1890, had a bit to do with reviving the by then languishing gold industry by spreading the word about the new process, his The Cyanide Process of Gold Extraction (1894) running to 10 editions. The printed syllabus for 1901—the year Park quit the school to become professor of mining at Otago—suggests an ambitious programme of instruction, ranging from pump and pit work, theoretical chemistry and practical astronomy to metallurgy, mineralogy, blowpipe determination (whatever that might be), ventilation and explosives. The introduction to the syllabus records the evolution of the school: an experimental battery test room added in 1888, a library and lecture room in 1895, three years later a separate assay room (the school made a little on the side by analysing the commercial value of ore or samples brought in by miners), and in 1899, the museum itself. The booklet has a photograph of the school's laboratory, which, when Isdale leads me to it from the museum, stands before me as if conjured directly from the page: the broad-planked kauri floor, the long bench laden with beakers of coloured liquid, the jars lining one corner, the blackboard which bears a bewildering chemical equation that could have been set down mere minutes ago by the chalk-dusted hand of the assistant lecturer, Mr Barrance. Isdale excuses himself to induct a gaggle of visitors into the art of fire assaying, which, as far as I can make out, consists of mixing pulverised rock with soda ash, borax, lead oxide and a dash of flour, then heating it to 1000° C. If all goes well the soda ash dissolves the quartz and any gold or silver is collected by the lead. The lead is cooled and hammered into a cube, then heated once more to astronomical temperatures in dishes made from bone ash that absorb any base metals, leaving just gold and silver. The silver is then dissolved using nitric acid, leaving pure gold. Emerging into the open air, I understand the Thames school's attraction to miners. It was on the doorstep of a vast array of minerals and close to any number of commercial mines—so close that a school playground once collapsed into an old shaft. Drive down Main Street today and you will pass over old mine workings. Anyone wanting to get beneath the surface of things should turn left at Cochrane Street and pull up outside the museum. It is a short journey to the centre of the earth.
Pine forest natives
Plantations of exotic timber trees, especially pines, are looked on with disdain by many as alien monocultures, an unpleasant accommodation necessary to protect precious indigenous forests from the logger's chainsaw. Yet a good range of native organisms, untroubled by the trees' pariah status, are quietly enjoying life beneath the rain of pine needles.
The common Jibe of the dance to anyone who seems to know anything is that they are a "walking encyclopedia". And true enough, reading an encyclopedia isn't everyone's idea of nirvana. Traditional encyclopedias tend to be heavy dust-gathering repositories of knowledge consulted only as a matter of last recourse. Many are text-rich, image-poor and quickly become out of date. But in the digital age there are new possibilities for the transmission of knowledge. In a way, the inter-net is a vast uncensored, unedited encyclopedia. Search engines allow us to access information on almost anything in a matter of seconds. But how reliable is it? How complete and authoritative? What institution is responsible for publishing it? A modicum of mistrust is not out of place in cyberspace. Enter Te Ara—the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, an electronic online publication designed to go some way towards addressing these issues. "Te ara" is Maori for "the pathway". On February 8, Helen Clark launched the first leg at a function held at Te Papa, in Wellington. The encyclopedia is produced by a team known as the Reference Group at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Some members worked on the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, originally a print publication but digitised in 2002 . Over the last two years, writers, editors, web designers and image researchers have joined the group, and the enlarged team has worked on the content of the encyclopedia in tandem with website-design firm Shift and IT firm Optimation, which provided the content-management system for the website. Unlike the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, for which anyone can write an entry, the writers of Te Ara are a mixture of external experts and in-house writers and (to ensure readability) editors. Their guiding principles are clarity, telling a story and factual accuracy. In pursuit of the last of these there is rigorous checking. The text for Te Ara undergoes a level of scrutiny similar to that applied to print publications in the most reputable publishing houses. As the encyclopedia is a digital publication, entries can easily be revised in the light of new knowledge, and any errors and typos periodically corrected. The last official Encyclopedia of New Zealand was A.H. McLintock's three-volume 1966 effort, which featured rather too many biographies of dead men interspersed with brilliant eclectic entries on topics such as New Zealand's history of duelling and unsolved crimes. All three volumes of McLintock's alphabetically organised publication have been digitised and launched in tandem with the first section, or theme, of Te Ara—"New Zealanders". This contains 96 entries on the peoples of New Zealand. All the major iwi feature, along with the various peoples who migrated here following European discovery. There are also entries on such topics as when New Zealand was first settled and migrating here on a sailing ship. "New Zealanders" is the first of nine themes, the remaining eight of which are to be published over the next eight years. An encyclopedia that is only one-ninth finished may seem rather unsatisfactory, especially to an international audience unfamiliar with New Zealand's setting and history. To tide users over the period of incompletion, eight concise entries entitled "New Zealand in Brief" provide a broad overview of the country. To give some idea of the depth of the site, if all the material in the first theme were printed it would fill some 6500 pages. There are some 337,000 words in the main text and 197,000 words in the captions. The large amount of text dedicated to explaining and interpreting images reveals one of the most distinctive features of the encyclopedia—the richness and variety of its graphics. The first theme features a wide range of illustrative material from 2394 different sources, including documents, maps, letters, diaries, photographs, artworks, moving images and sound files. These items occupy individual web pages alongside the relevant main-entry text. There are also a myriad ways in which to navigate the site, including using a search engine, which will become increasingly important as the site grows. The eight themes still to come will follow at the rate of one a year, with the last due in 2012. Next to be published will be "Earth, Sea and Sky"— geology, the marine environment and climate. Following this will be "The Bush"—New Zealand's terrestrial life. When the nine-year project is complete, the encyclopedia will be a comprehensive guide to all things New Zealand. Writing an encyclopedia is all about drawing lines where none exists in the real world; hence, each theme is split into around 100 entries. Try fitting all there is to say about New Zealand's geology, marine life and climate under 100 headings without missing out anything important and you will begin to understand some of the challenges the Reference Group faces. How many words do sharks get? Do you provide more text on topics with popular appeal (earthquakes, say) or those which are economically important but unglamorous (such as crushed rock)? These are the types of issues discussed at regular Group meetings. Trying to describe a website in writing is a bit like telling someone how a song goes without singing it. You really have to take a tour yourself. The text has also been checked, peer-reviewed and tweaked so that it tells the rich tale of what makes New Zealand unique in an accurate, literate and colourful way. You can now believe at least some of what you read on the internet.
In our Wellington house, one window frames a view of the Tararua Range. During summer, when heat haze renders the hills as indistinct as an impressionist's painting, they don't appear substantial—just a distant blue ridge, a smudge sometimes merging with the sky.
New Zealand vs Australian English
Until the close of the 20th century, New Zealand English was regarded as an offshoot of Australian English, with Australian lexicographers, such as Bill Ramson, claiming in 1966 that New Zealand English "seems to have borrowed heavily from Australian but given little in return". A close study of rural terms in the two national dictionaries, the Australian National Dictionary (AND) and the Dictionary of New Zealand English (DNZE) shows the reverse is more likely. This is not altogether surprising, when large-scale sheep-rearing was of greater relative significance in this small nation than for its larger neighbour in the 19th century. The New Zealand Official Yearbook of 1894 records that in 1890, New Zealand exported 1,533,393 carcasses of frozen mutton and lamb to Australia's 207,984. Between 1883 and 1893, New Zealand supplied approximately half the total quantity of frozen mutton and lamb into Britain, the Plate district (Argentina) two-fifths and Australia one-tenth. A cursory glance at the Australian and New Zealand lexicons shows that while both might include the same entry word, its history, sense or use can be quite distinctive. In New Zealand a bush ranger is a sheep that misses a muster, a supervisor in a bush-cutting or forestry team, and a black cricket. The Australian bush-ranger had its first use in the criminal world and later was used for a swagger. The term squatter in New Zealand has never had the connotations and lore of the term as it was originally used in Australia, the first illegal squatters in Australia being from the convict population. Absentee is another term with convict connections in Australian English, but in the rural New Zealand context had the initial meaning of an overseas property owner, or more recently, an owner-investor who does not live on, or farm, a property. A further term with colourful origins is cockatoo, firstly in convict life in Australia and then for a tenant farmer, before its more recent use to describe a farmer with a small holding. Only this latter use has been applied in New Zealand, together with the more specific sense of agriculturist or arable farmer. New Zealand farmers sell four-day-old bobbies (male calves), which is the name for six-ounce beers in Western Australia. In colloquial Australia, commercial travellers are those individuals with bags under their eyes, while in rural New Zealand, a commercial traveller is a ram that jumps the boundary fence. In New Zealand high country parlance, a gullyraker is a musterer, while in Australia it is used for a cattle-thief or a stock-whip. Pinky is the mane given to a newly shorn sheep by Kiwis, while in Australia it is a cheap wine or a bilby. Coat-hanger and toast-rack are two Kiwi expressions for a thin cow; in Australia they represent the Sydney Harbour bridge and a Melbourne tram respectively. Amongst the numerous colloquial names given to New Zealand sheep are new uses for Australianisms, such as dingoes for merino sheep and dingbats for difficult sheep. Terms where little separates the first recorded dates, as in smoko, recorded in New Zealand in 1864 and Australia in 1865, we can accept as Australasianisms, and there are many jocular terms shared between rural Australia and rural New Zealand for which provenance has never been established. Well known and wry are some examples that farmers developed for their fellows—if a farmer is known to be bankrupt, he is flyblown, but when he is ill, he is dog tucker. We recorded first the use of muster in the stock-gathering sense in New Zealand, along with musterer and general muster, and more surprisingly perhaps, run-holder. Although the domain of shearing is one that has historically been shared by New Zealanders and Australians through shearing gangs working in both countries, many terms show earlier or distinctive New Zealand use. Woolshed terms like blade-shearing, board, boardwalker, and full board have their first recorded use in New Zealand English. Shed shepherds moved sheep in and out of New Zealand pens and New Zealand shearers leg a sheep to pull it on to the board, while leggings and tassels are inferior leg-wool. A sock in New Zealand English is also leg wool, other New Zealand wool remnants being trimmings, locks and fleeces that can be locky. Piece is a wool term first used in New Zealand, and adopted by Australia, along with belly wool. Off the blades, pizzle stain, shed stain, waterpot and woolly-pointed are terms listed only in the DNZE, and apparently only New Zealand shearers play the piano when they select the sheep they will shear. Shearing terms like barebelly, bin, cut out, roll, roller, roller-up and tableman have first recorded use in New Zealand. If New Zealand fleeces remain unrolled, the shed is described as snowed in, woolled up or woolled in, terms that have no lexical record across the Tasman. New Zealand blade shearers attach bows, cockspurs and jockeys to their handshears, while a kinchela is an adjustment made to Australian shearing blades. Run-out is a distinctively New Zealand shearing term where shearers shear down the moneyside, known in Australia as the whipping side. New Zealand shearers and bush workers wear heavy black woollen sleeveless garments known variously as black singlets, bush singlets or bushman's singlets, none of which is entered in AND. New Zealand shearers skin-scratch or bootlace when they are careless, but Australians slum. Rougher shearers in New Zealand are known as smallgoods men, while in the AND, they are listed as tomahawkers or tommyhawkers. When a woman or a boss approaches a New Zealand shearing board, a warning comment goes out in the form of brown shoes, ducks on the pond, red light or sixty-nine. Cover combs and snow combs are used in New Zealand but are not recorded in Australia. Catch, catching pens, counting out pens and forcing pens have earliest records of use in New Zealand, and a dagger in New Zealand dags sheep or removes chips or rousie's chewing gum, while in Australia a dagger is the name given to handblades. There is no record of bullseye, ring crutch or honeymoon shear in AND and tally book, tally out and tally pen are terms listed only in NZDE. A sheep that has missed a muster in New Zealand might be dubbed a bushranger, double-decker, double-fleecer, hermit or placer, although some of these terms have an additional specific application as well. A placer, cabbage-tree sheep or hermit is an orphaned lamb that has attached itself to an localised isolated environment or element in the environment. (Placer was recently adopted by Australian farmers, but with a slightly different sense, as in an animal that has stayed in one place.) The noun woolly for an unshorn sheep was recorded first in New Zealand in 1888, eleven years before that cited in the AND. Lambing paddock is recorded in both dictionaries, but the first New Zealand citation is 60 years older than the earliest Australian one, while ram paddock was also recorded first in New Zealand. Freezer, as in an animal destined for slaughter and export, was coined in New Zealand, and later recorded in Australia. Hundreds of other examples are documented at the New Zealand Dictionary Centre at Victoria University. The earlier recording of numerous terms in New Zealand certainly shows an element of lexical autonomy that was not previously considered. We even rattled our dags before the Aussies (NZ 1968, Australia 1980), and it took some time for them to adopt blind gully and Gentle Annie. Such Aussie terms as hoop (rider), ging (shanghai), mickey (calf), mickery (waterhole), gibber (boulder), bushie (rural-dweller), gilgai (hole), tier (hill), and humpy (hut), have never been acquired here, and were definitely not heard near the legendary dog-dosing strip at Dunsandel.
Weevil upheaval
Not seen since 1922, Hadramphus tuberculatus (the Canterbury knob-bled weevil) has been largely forgotten—a category X (presumed extinct) species. It was once common throughout lowland Canterbury from Oxford to Waimate and was regularly seen in Hagley Park. A true lowland species, it was never found in the Southern Alps or even on Banks Peninsula. An occasional eccentric entomologist spent the odd day cursing their bloodied hands while they searched amongst the spikes of the weevil's known host plants—members of the genus Aciphylla (spaniards or speargrasses), one of the prickliest groups of plants in the country. Until recently such searches proved futile, and the fate of the knobbled weevil seemed more certain as the years passed. However, in November 2004, Laura Young, a Masters student at the School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury, began a study of Aciphylla in conjunction with her supervisor, Professor Dave Kelly. Her project aimed to explore the reproductive ecology of Aciphylla, including the interactions between the plants and their insect pollinators. Very few insect-pollinated plant species mast seed (that is, seed only once, copiously and en masse, every so many years), and even fewer are dioecious (bear male and female flowers on separate plants). Aciphylla is both a mast seeder and dioecious. It comprises about 40 species in New Zealand and three in Australia. Many Aciphylla species are important in high country grasslands. Insects are their known pollinators; however, little is known of the species involved. It is also a mystery how the insects survive when the pollen on which they are thought to depend is produced only once every few years. While examining hundreds of Aciphylla plants at Burkes Pass Scenic Reserve, Laura and her field assistant, Sarah Luxton, found a large weevil crawling about the base of the rosette on a plant not far from the roadside. Surprised to see such a large insect, they joked about it being the "extinct" giant weevil. The following week, at Hakataramea Pass, Laura found another weevil. Feeding on A. aurea, it was about three times as large as the one from the week before. She brought it to me to identify, and it turned out to be the rare Lyperobius huttoni—a black weevil 3-4 cm in length. Shealso mentioned the earlier weevil, which proved to be the elusive Hadramphus tuberculatus, the first specimen seen in 80 years. H. tuberculatus is now the rarest member of a small genus of large, flightless, nocturnal weevils. Other species are present on the Chatham Islands, in Fiordland, and on the Snares and other sub-antarctic islands. All are threatened by severe habitat modification, introduced predators or both. Alison Evans, invertebrate ecologist at DoC, is delighted by the chance discovery, considering it one of the most significant entomological finds of the last 50 years. A careful survey of the area in which it was made—luckily within a DoC reserve—is planned, but whether the knobbled weevil is one of the mysterious pollinators of Aciphylla has yet to be established.
Queen Street trees
Auckland's Queen Street, the country's most iconic retail thoroughfare—a ribbon of asphalt surrounded by jostling high-rises—is not a place one associates with trees. But they're there just the same. South of the town hall, just below the street, is a gentle gully, and it's full of trees. Myers Park—little more than three hectares in size and encircled by tall buildings—is sometimes referred to as the forgotten park. But it's a spot worth remembering because it isn't only full of trees, it's full of history. The story begins nearly a hundred years ago, when today's leafy gully was nothing but a festering pit of rubbish tips and slum shanties. Money, and the vision of something better, transformed the place. The money came courtesy of businessman and politician Arthur Myers, who purchased the land in 1913 and gifted it to the city as a park. Myers also had vision—but so did others. The notion of city parks as the embodiment of civic virtue was at the heart of a powerful movement at the time. "City Beautiful" was a worldwide phenomenon. Parks were seen as providing opportunities for citizens to improve their physical health, aesthetic sense and moral values. It was an idea that captured the imagination of many civic leaders of the time—and, luckily for Auckland, Myers was one of them. Parks also had an educational connection. It was a time of building playgrounds, and Myers paid for the construction of one in the park, as well as a nearby kindergarten that still bears his name. As I wandered through the park looking at mature trees—swamp cypresses (Taxodium distichum); Australian red cedars (Toona australis); Morton Bay figs (Ficus macrophylla)—I tried to imagine a wealthy figure of today making a similar endowment. Somehow it seemed unlikely. Did that mean that people were more public-spirited back then? Or had the altruism of yesteryear merely taken another guise these days? The trees at Myers Park had nothing to say on the subject, but they did speak of another time. The formal avenues of palms—Canary Island (Phoenix canariensis) and cotton (Washingtonia filifera)—seemed oddly comforting. Standing in their long shadows I fancied I could almost hear a brass band playing God Save the King—but the tune was so distant I didn't know which king they were saving. Other trees caught my eye: a white pine from Japan (Pinus parviflora); an ombu from the Americas (Phytolacca dioica); an Asiatic coral flame tree (Erythrina sykesii); an Atlantic cedar (Cedrus atlantica). These were specimens from an era of wide botanical horizons; when curiosities from abroad were avidly collected; when a stroll in the park meant a geography and history lesson rolled into one. Natives, of course, were almost absent. They must have seemed all too ordinary in those days. But I was pleased to note a couple of sizeable puriri (Vitex lucens) growing amongst the international celebrities. They looked lush and vaguely tropical—like their teak counterparts. Perhaps they'd been mistaken for exotics. Even more absent were the elms (Ulmus x hollandica). Once there had been 12 of them. They'd stood, lofty and majestic, in the north-eastern corner of the park. Notable in life, they became even more notable in death—but for all the wrong reasons. In 1989, these unfortunates were the first trees in New Zealand to succumb to the deadly Dutch elm disease. Caused by a pathogenic fungus (Ceratocystis ulmi), this has wreaked havoc in many parts of the Northern hemisphere, including Britain, France and North America. It is carried by a couple of species of elm bark beetle, one of which (Scolytus multistriatus) has become established here. Yet, so far, the disease has been confined to a few isolated pockets of Auckland, and there is hope that it will eventually be eradicated. Like the trees, the buildings around the park have grown over the years. There are a lot of them now—office blocks, apartments, hotels—and each new edifice seems twice the height of the one it has replaced. They tower over everything; even the lanky cotton palms look insignificant beside them. People were less conspicuous. The once resplendent Myers Park kindergarten has closed. A small congregation of youths gathered by a disused fountain; I discreetly kept my distance. More striking were a couple of regulars. One of them had clearly taken up residence inside the hollowed-out trunk of an ombu tree. He looked elderly and well used to living rough. It seemed churlish to deny him some much-needed shelter, yet somehow I had the feeling this wasn't quite what Arthur Myers and his friends had envisaged, back in the days when there was a king on the English throne. But utopias are like that: they seldom turn out the way they were intended. And despite the obvious encroachments of modern life, Myers Park still offers plenty of charm for tree-lovers like me. The swamp cypresses are some of the largest you'll find in New Zealand. Then there's the delight in finding a monkey hand tree (Chiranthodendron pentadactylon). So named because of the hand-like appendages to its flowers, the monkey hand tree is relatively rare in New Zealand. In Mexico, where it grows naturally, it's attributed with magical powers—and I must say I felt somewhat spellbound when I first noticed it. Rare, too, are the Australian red cedars. This rather graceful tree isn't really a cedar at all—in fact it's not even a conifer—but its cedar like timber has made it prized by loggers. Not so long ago it grew commonly in the coastal regions of south-east Australia. Now it exists only in isolated pockets—and, thankfully, in Myers Park. The day was getting on—and I had a lot to be thankful about. I had the feeling that my expedition to Myers Park had fulfilled its mission. The trees had spoken to me—and something of the spirit of the past had touched me. I rubbed my fingers affectionately down the bark of the Japanese white pine and watched the children from a nearby school stream into the park. Trees and the laughter of children: it was a nice combination.
The haemorrhaging knowledge economy
KiwiAir: Congratulations, Captain Kirk. After searching through 65 top applicants from around the globe, we have decided to appoint you as a senior pilot. Capt. Kirk: Well thank you, gracious sirs. I'm delighted to get the job and look forward to starting flying with you. KiwiAir: Ah, yes...flying with us. There are a few preliminaries before that commences. We will, of course, pay you and provide you with an office, hangar space, ground crew and the usual facilities. But you will need to raise the money for an aircraft, aircrew, flight attendants, fuel, on-board meals, etc. yourself. And you will be expected to choose several new and exciting destinations to fly to with your new aircraft. We are giving you an absolutely wonderful opportunity here! Your success will be judged upon how many passengers you carry and how much money you generate for the airline. And there will be a certain amount of teaching and mentoring required as well. Once you get the money, well be happy to administer the payments for your outgoings, though you should factor in an extra amount for admin and services—water, power, telephone, etc. An extra 25 per cent should cover that. That KiwiAir—or any other airline—should operate in such a way seems improbable. It is also hard to imagine specialists in the public health system, army majors, roading engineers, senior high-school teachers or social-welfare staff raising the money to do whatever they are employed to do. Yet there is an important realm of public endeavour where precisely this is the norm—government science. Bright young people are exhorted to enter science. A BSc takes three years, an honours degree another year or two, then a PhD a further three years and sometimes more. But in today's very competitive scientific world, you're dreaming if you think a PhD will get you a job. You need experience as a postdoc in a couple of high-pressure overseas labs. Once you have your name on half a dozen good scientific papers after working 12 hours a day (for pretty average wages) for four years—well, you could be getting close to securing a lecturing job at an average New Zealand university. After 10 or 11 years of training you finally have a real job. You'll get paid about the same as a beginning policeman, have to give 70 lectures a year, run dozens of lab classes and supervise from three to six research students, serve on a few university committees—and do research. Research is held up to science students as a holy grail, the pinnacle of human endeavour. As an academic, you find promotion is largely based on research success. Teaching is your first priority—try not giving a few lectures and saying you were busy with research and see how that goes down—but research is what really matters. You win jobs based on your research record alone. However, although research is generally expensive to conduct and central to your activities, you will get little or no money for it from the university. Instead, you will be expected to raise research funds yourself by applying to various granting agencies. The money is for technical staff and postdoc salaries, for supplies, for equipment, for attending conferences, for paying to have papers published in scientific journals and for university overheads. Indeed, when I taught in university 10 years ago, even the money to pay for research by enrolled masters and PhD students came largely from outside research grants—hardly any came from the university, and I doubt that much has changed. How much money is needed? Salaries for one technician and one postdoc, supplies for them and three students plus a modest item of specialised equipment would easily run to $150,000 a year in my old field, cancer research—and this is a small research group. Some say you need $250,000 a year to employ and support a serious researcher. About 80 per cent of applications for research funds are rejected because there is never even close to sufficient money to pay for the projects that are considered worthwhile. Applications themselves are a lot of work. A big one could easily consume all your non-teaching time for a month or two and run to 10,000 words. Most years, you will have to write several, some smaller than others, because most will be rejected. It's very time-consuming and discouraging. Panels of scientists have to assess all these applications and periodically visit and interview candidates, all of which entails a vast amount of extra work for more established scientists. Your keen young scientist is suddenly no longer an experimentalist: he is a beggar—admittedly an upmarket one but a beggar nonetheless—a shuffler of forms and a supervisor of the efforts of others. I remember years ago reading that the work involved in making and reviewing grant applications each year in the US was estimated to be equivalent to the entire scientific effort of Australia. And most of this effort is wasted in that it is expended on rejected applications. What subject do you research? To have any chance of getting funding the subject of your research has to be extraordinarily important, particularly relevant to the people of New Zealand, something that is going to bring enormous benefits to much of the population, and yet is completely novel. It's also helpful if you can convince the holders of the purse that you are uniquely qualified to realise this vision. But even if you manage these rare feats, success is not assured. Science—and governments—have fads and enthusiasms for particular research areas that change over time—sometimes abruptly—and even if you are the world's leading authority on some subject that is now seen as passé, you'll be out of luck. Still, it could be worse. A university lecturer continues to get his salary even if his research funding dries up. As Jeff Tallon points out in his Viewpoint, those in the Crown Research Institutes (CRIs) are not so fortunate. Their grants also pay their salaries—no grant, no salary, no job. Because there is a considerable element of chance in getting funding, sooner or later you are bound to miss out, even if you are very well versed in "grantsmanship". Experienced scientists from the CRIs will often be able to secure jobs with overseas institutions (which find it hard to believe that we would cast off such people), but that is a substantial loss to New Zealand, and one that under the CRI funding system has been pretty much an annual haemorrhage. Why do we have trouble attracting people into science? Those smart enough to do it are also smart enough to see that they are better off in law or commerce or medicine, where they can earn much greater sums without the hassles. Scientists are probably the most highly trained of any group of professionals, yet salaries for a lecturer start at $50,000 and many/most will never earn much more than $75,000 p a. Of course, having spent all those years in training, your student loan will likely be intimidating. We also live at a time when scientists are viewed with suspicion by much of the public. Who wants to be a target for anti-GM campaigners or for animal liberationists? Steve Pawson, who is a contributor to this issue of New Zealand Geographic, is a PhD student at Canterbury University. He aspires to become a professional entomologist and is already the treasurer of the NZ Entomological Society. He suspects that research funding in his area of interest, which is not especially fashionable, will be next to impossible to get, so is working on setting up small enterprises (www.epenz.co.nz) which will earn him sufficient money to support his science habit. Enterprising and commendable this may be, but if young scientists have to resort to such measures, it bodes ill for the knowledge economy.
Funding research in New Zealand
I have been in the research industry for 38 years. All of that time has been spent as an employee of the former DSIR and in its reincarnation, Industrial Research Ltd—a Crown Research Institute (CRI). That's a long time in the same job but over those years my studies have taken me to universities in Copenhagen, Oxford, Cambridge, London and Paris, and more recently I took up a joint appointment at Victoria University. I collaborate with more than a dozen different institutions around the globe, have acted as a peer reviewer for research proposals from many different countries and served time as deputy chair of the NZ Marsden Fund and on a ministerial science delegation to the EU. All this represents considerable experience with both the NZ and international funding environments. Over the years many changes have taken place, most notably the disestablishment of the DSIR and the ongoing realignment of funding through the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FRST). Not all these changes have been good for NZ science, and there is now a huge administrative overburden and some major gaps within the system. What follows is an attempt to outline just some of the issues. Despite my university experience, my perspective is primarily that of the CRI sector. The merits of a "knowledge-based" economy in New Zealand are widely recognised and often stated. It is now almost a cliché that "we must increasingly complement our traditional large-volume low-profit commodity products with a wide range of value-added smart products". This demands a commitment to research and development, and there have been attempts in recent years to bolster these. The problem is that our international competitors have come to the same conclusion and are making much more serious investments in science and technology with very aggressive targets. The EU has adopted a goal of 3 per cent of GDP directed to research spending by 2010. New Zealand is currently sitting at around 1.0 per cent and has abandoned its old target of 1.8 per cent. What is worse is the fact that per-capita GDP in Europe is much higher than here, so our per-capita spending falls even further behind the EU goals. Now I don't want to focus here on quantity but rather on mechanism. Suffice to say that we invest a quarter the per-capita research spending of Denmark. We cannot therefore claim a special exemption for small countries. The numbers game shows that we are not as serious about research knowledge as we make out.* The "business as usual" stance adopted by our science ministry will leave an ever growing gap between NZ and the rest of the developed world. The US InterAcademy Council recently concluded that, in order to survive competitively, developing nations must adopt science-spending targets of 1.5 per cent of GDP. This should serve as a major wake-up call to our own nation. Worse still, the few dollars that do come are fickle. We have a competitive funding system that might support a research programme for several years then shifts its resources to other competing programmes a few years later. Research institutions therefore invest much time in attempting to second-guess these wind shifts. But in the end it is all a bit of a lottery. Change the allocating committee and there will be a different set of winners and losers. More importantly, this approach fails to recognize that to convert a scientific discovery into a commercial business always takes at least 10 to 15 years. In my own area of research, superconductivity, it has taken 17 years to spin off a viable business. Let's be clear about the consequences of missing out on government-allocated research funding. Tenured university staff will be restricted in their ability to hire short-term staff (mainly post-doctoral fellows) but they will not lose their jobs. Staff from CRIs and other similar providers cannot subsidise their researchers from other projects. Redundancies are inevitable. A few years ago 40 staff were stripped from HortResearch. More recently, 20 were lost from Forest Research. The most recent funding round left a number of institutions, including my own, reeling. It takes years to recruit research staff from home and abroad, and a young PhD with post-doctoral experience will have spent 11 years in training—as much as a third of their working career. One has to ask, why would they invest so much in science in the present uncertain climate? New Zealand is unusual, if not unique, in having so much of its public science funding contestable. Other developed countries protect valuable staff by providing bulk grants to research institutes—allowing the institutes to distribute the money internally as they see fit—and having only a modest fraction of research funding contestable. Government recognizes the problem but seeks to balance "stability" with "flexibility". By flexibility it means opportunity for new entrants, new ideas and new directions. Competitive bidding to an agency such as FRST is its preferred paradigm for ensuring flexibility. Stability has recently been tackled by lengthening the funding period up to a maximum of six years. But this has the opposite effect for the losers. They may not bid again for as much as four years and certainly cannot be "carried" for so long a period. In such cases redundancy is more effectively ensured. Can a committee possibly make correct choices? A post-war committee advised the Japanese government that car manufacture for the highly competitive export market was out of the question! History has told a very different story. Prior to the last bidding round, my institute spent 18 months radically repositioning its technology platforms to marry research capability with business opportunity for New Zealand. This was a rigorous process that introduced, in some cases, wholly new activities consistent with the resources we could bring to bear. The result was a number of broad-based and innovative programmes that crossed all the old boundaries between disciplines. This internal process showed that "flexibility" does not require external competitive bidding. Along with others I personally toiled at this task for 6 months, setting aside research responsibilities to effect the best possible outcome, only to then engage in what I have referred to as the lottery of the bidding process to a committee on which scientists were hopelessly underrepresented! Such a situation results in, at best, a single panel member who has direct expertise in the field of investigation. But this creates great risk because a mistaken view by the single "expert" cannot be questioned or controverted by the other inexpert panel members. There must be sufficient scientists on a panel for a technical issue raised by one to be intelligently evaluated by another member. Everyone has their prejudices and limits to their knowledge. A better balance would be achieved by a panel composed mainly of scientists with two industry or business people. This is the opposite of the current model. This downplaying of the importance of scientific excellence and expertise is carried through to the review process, in which governance is clearly more valued than scientific outcomes. In fact, government must recognise that its institutions are capable of conducting their own rigorous review processes that can address both scientific excellence as well as commercial outcomes. Finally, there is an urgent need to introduce a funding mechanism New Zealand. This was a rigorous process that introduced, in some cases, wholly new activities consistent with the resources we could bring to bear. The result was a number of broad-based and innovative programmes that crossed all the old boundaries between disciplines. This internal process showed that "flexibility" does not require external competitive bidding. Along with others I personally toiled at this task for 6 months, setting aside research responsibilities to effect the best possible outcome, only to then engage in what I have referred to as the lottery of the bidding process to a committee on which scientists were hopelessly underrepresented! Such a situation results in, at best, a single panel member who has direct expertise in the field of investigation. But this creates great risk because a mistaken view by the single "expert" cannot be questioned or controverted by the other inexpert panel members. There must be sufficient scientists on a panel for a technical issue raised by one to be intelligently evaluated by another member. Everyone has their prejudices and limits to their knowledge. A better balance would be achieved by a panel composed mainly of scientists with two industry or business people. This is the opposite of the current model. This downplaying of the importance of scientific excellence and expertise is carried through to the review process, in which governance is clearly more valued than scientific outcomes. In fact, government must recognise that its institutions are capable of conducting their own rigorous review processes that can address both scientific excellence as well as commercial outcomes. Finally, there is an urgent need to introduce a funding mechanism has absolutely transformed research capability within the MacDiarmid Institute in which I have responsibilities. The extremely positive outcomes from this initiative should be studied as a model for opening government-initiated capital funding to all research institutions in NZ. In the light of this rather negative outlook, here are some recommendations. My view is that CRIs should be predominantly bulk funded, somewhat as they were back in the days of DSIR but with a strong accountability regime. Here is a possible model: 70 per cent bulk fund institutes to ensure "stability" of core activities 30 per cent competitive bidding to ensure "flexibility" full accountability placed on CEOs for quality, relevance, commercial success, flexibility and stability review the quality of science for each institute every six years, the reviews to be undertaken by a panel of internationally recognised scientists conduct six-yearly reviews of commercial activity using a mixed panel of scientists, manufacturers and business people, these reviews to be offset by three years from the science reviews reviews to recommend changes in investment at institute level (to the funding agency) and at programme level (to CEOs) reviews to guide strategic directions so that activities can migrate over time, subject to recruitment, retraining, re-teaming and infrastructure development, which all take many years; evolution of research platforms to be internally managed with accountability for outcomes, not by an external guillotine committee continued freedom to commercialise, and to reinvest commercial income the New Economies Research Fund (NERF) to reaffirm the central role of fundamental science in the CRIs as much as in the universities, which would necessitate a stronger representation of scientists on the panels NZ must urgently readopt its old R&D target of 1.8 per cent GDP perhaps most importantly, this country must follow the standard set by all western countries and introduce mechanisms whereby researchers can bid to the funding agencies for purchasing capital research equipment. There is a telling Maori proverb: "He rakau morimori e kore e taea to piki "—"A tree stripped of its branches cannot be climbed". The knowledge society will not thrive on fear, uncertainty and deprivation. The funding system must recognize the long-term nature of research activity and work to ensure stability with genuine research career options for upcoming students. We as a nation can be much bolder in our commitment to, and investment in, research. Scientists must be excellent and accountable—so must the funding system.
Among the paintings currently hanging in Te Papa is a striking celebration of waves by Michael Illingworth. A strong wave pattern rippling through clouds is echoed by waves in tree-line, sea and rocks. All are witnessed by half the head of a green-faced observer wide-eyed with astonishment but blessed with a golden eye like the ball of the sun. We live in an atmosphere whose behaviour is characterised by wave action across an enormous range of scales. The clouds in the painting are reminiscent of clouds formed by Kelvin Helmhotz waves. These clouds have wave crests spaced in similar fashion to those in the painting, although they have a flat base. As you watch them, the crests gradually become taller and narrower then topple over like a wave breaking on a beach. Although this takes place in slow motion compared with an ocean wave, it is usually frustratingly quick if you are trying to find a camera to capture it on film. Also, the clouds are often thin and dull grey in appearance and seldom look as satisfying in a photograph as in the sky. Kelvin Helmhotz waves form at the boundary between two layers of air that are moving at different speeds. As their crests reach up into the upper layer they are toppled by the higher wind speed there. Arguably the most photogenic clouds formed by atmospheric waves are the altocumulus lenticularis found in eastern areas of New Zealand when strong north-west winds blow across the main ranges. These are particularly spectacular when lit up by the red and yellow light of sunset. When air is forced to rise over a range of mountains, gravity pulls it back down on the lee side, causing it to oscillate up and down, forming a series of waves downwind of the mountains much like those seen in a river when water flows over a rock. These are known as standing waves, because air (or, in a river, water) travels through the troughs and crests of the wave pattern while these remain in the same place. As air rises into a crest, it expands and cools, causing cloud to form; then, as it descends into a trough, it is compressed and warmed, causing cloud to dissipate. Although the cloud appears to hang motionless in the sky, the air can be moving through it at more than 150 kph. Such waves can extend hundreds of kilometres beyond the mountains and often show up clearly in satellite images. Since the restoring force acting on the air once the mountains have deflected it upward is gravity, they are known as gravity waves. They are typical of a stable atmosphere and can sometimes be seen in satellite photos propagating for thousands of kilometres through the stratocumulus layer formed under an anticyclone having been initiated by vertical motions in a cold front. Paradoxically, the giant cumulonimbus clouds that typify an unstable atmosphere and cause thunderstorms can also give birth to gravity waves. When cumulonimbus clouds form over land heated by the sun, there is normally a stable layer of air beneath them that the warm air over the land has to break through as it rises. Downbursts of cold air falling out of the clouds excite gravity waves in this stable layer like a stone thrown into a pond. Further cumulonimbus clouds often develop where downbursts from two thunderstorms collide. Cumulonimbus clouds can also create gravity waves high in the atmosphere. Giant "anvil" clouds, with their characteristic flat, spreading tops, form when a rising column of air hits the tropopause—a stable atmospheric layer that constitutes a type of lid on the lower atmosphere (the troposphere), in which most weather occurs. The rising air punches its way through the tropopause into the relatively warmer stratosphere, then collapses back down, forming the anvil shape. The warm air in the up-draught tends to rise in pulses, each like a stone thrown up into the tropopause, causing ripples to radiate through the anvil. Astronauts have taken some spectacular photographs of this effect. Waves are also evident in atmospheric motion on the larger scale. As the mid-latitude westerlies circle the South Pole, they bend and twist from south-west to north-west in giant waves broader than the Australian continent. A 500 hPa map of the atmosphere covering the Southern hemisphere shows contour lines weaving towards the Antarctic then away towards the tropics as they circle the pole. Typically, the contour lines form four or five large waves in the circumpolar westerly flow (at their largest there is room for only three) with a host of smaller waves woven into them. While the large waves move slowly westward, the smaller waves move eastward, and the smaller they are the faster they move. The interplay between the waves of different sizes goes a long way to explaining the development and decay of the fronts, lows and highs that make up the weather. As air blows round the curves in the wave patterns it acquires vorticity, or spin. As it blows around the crest of a wave, moving from an area of southwesterlies to an area of northwesterlies, it acquires cyclonic vorticity, which favours the development of a low-pressure centre at sea level. The stronger the wind, or the sharper the change of direction, the greater the tendency to develop a surface low. When a short-wave trough in the westerly flow catches up with a long-wave trough, the curvature and wind speed increase, and thus the tendency to develop a surface low also increases. Conversely, when a short-wave trough moves into a long-wave ridge, the low tends to weaken. Typically, a low forming in this way will do so on an existing front. On a sequence of weather maps, the front will appear to buckle and develop a wave at the location of the new low—hence the term wave-depression. On a very much smaller scale, atmospheric motion can also produce sound waves. Sound can be excited by strong winds blowing over certain kinds of terrain or obstacles such as trees or buildings, but doesn't influence the weather directly, despite the hopes of those horticulturists who try to break up hail stones with loud noises. However, sound waves can interfere with weather forecasting. Encompassing the globe, rolling from the ranges, resonating over topographical irregularities, atmospheric waves are all around us—an elemental perpetuum mobile worthy of artistic celebration.
George Adams, old but not out
A short, weathered, Tolkienesque figure tries the door of a decrepit shed at the bush's edge. The shed is the former Paradise School at the head of Lake Wakatipu, and the elderly gentleman is the last survivor of its seven pupils from the 1920s. He is George Adams, formerly of Mt Earnslaw Station and now of Timaru, back visiting family today, and tomorrow tearing around the southern lakes and the South Island's big braided rivers in his personal hovercraft. He is the oldest registered owner of a hovercraft in New Zealand. What sort of man dares to zap around in a hovercraft at age 89, when he should be dozing on a recliner in front of television? This is a man for whom the call of the bowling green will never be as strong as the call of the wild. George has been shaped by mountains and plains and rivers, by horseback and hardship, by a simple and honest life, by two wives and six kids and by a limitless capacity for hard work. Born in Heriot, west Otago, in 1916, the youngest of eight, he came with his family to the upper Wakatipu in 1920-21, when he was five. He almost never made it. "My first memory is of my father cutting oats with three horses and a binder. I was just a little chap, and I got lost in the oats for half a day. They didn't know I was there. When they found me I was carrying my trousers. I probably took them off to lie down and go to sleep. I was lucky not to have been cut up by the binder." The family sold up at Heriot and, like carpetbaggers seeking a new life, left for the two-day journey on the back of their truck to Mt Earnslaw Station. "We had a four-cylinder Chevvy without a cab or body—just the chassis. My father built a cab, seat and deck and transported the whole family on the back from Heriot to Kingston, at the bottom of Lake Wakatipu." From there, truck and family caught the ferry Earnslaw to Queenstown, then to Glenorchy at the head of the lake, and then drove 20 km over a horse-and-buggy track to Mt Earnslaw, fording the Rees River to reach the station. It was, George says with typical understatement, "quite an adventure". At school, in that converted shed under the towering mountains at Paradise, George's classmates were the sons and daughters of the scheelite miners, farmers, sawmillers and gold-miners who populated the region, and in class he was clearly a cheeky little pest. "I got the strap every morning before class started. The teacher, Pearl Reid, said that was in anticipation of my behaviour that day. She was just out of standard six with a certificate in proficiency. She could read and write and do a few sums. There were no exercise books. We wrote on slates with slate pencils. "A lot of the kids in the region didn't go to school at all, like the family down the road. They were tough kids, just like their father, the biggest fellow around, a sawmiller who could lift huge logs. One of the boys had a cat, and when it scratched him he held the cat up and whacked off its head with a tomahawk. They were tough kids all right..." George, although he would never say so, was a pretty tough kid himself. He was thrown from the school "bus"—a horse and gig—when the horse spooked during a storm, breaking his collarbone. There was no local doctor so the bone was left to mend of its own accord. "Six months later, when we visited Queenstown, the doctors had a look and said the break hadn't knitted properly and they would have to reset it. One of them held me down while the other rebroke it with his thumbs without anaesthetic." The broken bones department, which was part and parcel of life in those days, wasn't restricted to humans. "We'd find ducks' nests and break a wing on each of the ducklings so they wouldn't be able to fly, and leave them in the nests. Two or three months later the dogs would hunt them out. The ducklings had fattened up like muttonbirds. They were delicious." Ducks weren't the only wildlife to suffer. Fiordland's famous mountain parrots came in for their share of hardship. "Kea attacked stock, and the local council put a bounty on them. On one hunt I shot 16. I got five shillings per beak." As we drive around George's boyhood turf, more memories come back. "I first went hunting over there as a lad [pointing toward the Rees Valley], where I'd take a pony, a .22 rifle and a blanket or two and sleep out for an early-morning shot at a deer. And Diamond Creek over there—used to be full of 10- and 11-pound trout. See that house? A remittance man from Ireland lived there. Got his own sister in the family way. And over there we had the Spitter. He chewed twists of tobacco and could spit about as far as that fence [six metres. He stank. Don't think he ever washed or took a bath." Isolation ruled those early years, especially when floods roared down the Dart and Rees valleys, smashing bridges and cutting off the family for weeks. There were no roads, just horse-and-gig tracks. The Adams family truck and two ageing buses at Kinloch were the only motor vehicles George can remember in the upper Wakatipu. A trip from Glenorchy to Queenstown took eight hours. Today it takes 40 minutes. There was no doctor, no dentist, no police, no crime to speak of, a newspaper maybe once a week, and the occasional drunk who would wash up on Wakatipu's shores to break the rhythm of life. George's father, a blacksmith with his own forge, would do all the smithy work for the region. He was also the family shopper, and every couple of years would make an expedition to Dunedin to buy goods and clothes for the whole family. But really he had no idea. "He'd come back with the same size clothes for everybody, including undies. My undies came up to my chest and under my armpits." After 10 years in the upper Wakatipu, the Adams family moved in 1930 to take over Cainard Station at Fairlight, near Garston in northern Southland, where George left school at 14 to fulfil his dream of becoming a high-country musterer—a dream inspired by his first contact with horses, when, as a toddler at Heriot, he left his trike outside the farmhouse one night and it was trampled by a Clydesdale. For the next 12 years George rode Cairnard Station's high ranges, all 64,350 ha of them, up among the clouds and snow, in the sweltering summers and merciless winters. The toughest job as a musterer, he recalls, was snow-raking—freeing up lost, frozen, snowbound sheep and raking (stamping) a trail to guide them out of the drifts and up to the ridges where they could find enough food to stave off death by starvation. "A mob of sheep would get snowed in on the dark side of a gully. We would tramp the snow away to reveal the dirt beneath. The sheep needed to be able to see the dirt to follow the track that we stamped up to a windswept ridge where they could find a bit of pasture and scrub. "We had to get there quickly and work nonstop because the sheep were starving and would eventually eat each other's wool and die. On one occasion we worked 48 hours at a stretch. It was tough. "It was a hard life, but a healthy life. We'd all be as fit as trout." You not only had to be fit, you had to be made of something stronger to go out rabbiting on winter nights, but with rabbits eroding whole hillsides the work had to be done. "At Cainard I once poisoned 1111 rabbits in a night. I picked them up with a dray and had to go back to the farm to skin them. I could skin 100 an hour, so the skinning took more than 11 hours. The carcasses were all frozen as stiff as boards. It was a tough job." That winter he earned £1700—"big money in those days, nearly enough to buy a farm". Those were the days of the Great Depression. "I had five older brothers to help run the place, and we were OK, but they were desperate times. We had 14,000 merinos on Cainard and in the worst year of the Depression we got only £500 for the wool cheque." Despite the hardships, they were idyllic years for a young man, spent close to the stars and the sun, ringed by Tennyson's azure worlds in lonely lands atop God's Own Country. But they were shattered by the horror of World War II, in which George served with Second New Zealand Division in the Middle East and Italy and fought in the infamous Battle of Monte Cassino. "At Paradise I learned reading, writing and arithmetic, but my real education was the war. We don't need any more wars—all those young fellas being cut to pieces ..." After the war George drove tour buses around Southland and the Lakes District. Romance bloomed in the bus-company office in Lumsden, northern Southland, on his meeting the fair-haired, blue-eyed clerk Grace Casson. The two married in Dunedin in the mid-1940s before settling on their first farm, an 80 ha spread at Wrights Bush, central Southland, which cost £9600, and where they raised three daughters. George's most tangible asset has always been his amazing capacity for hard work, and he showed his entrepreneurial flair at Wrights Bush by starting a sideline in gorse-cutting. "No gorse had been cut in Southland since before the war. It had spread like mad and gorse fences had become a chain wide. I bought a Hedgehog gorse-cutter, attached it to a Fordson tractor and went to work. In one winter's cutting I made £1500. A brand-new car in those days cost £900. After getting home from gorse-cutting I used to dig ditches till 11 o'clock at night." At that time too, he recalls fondly, there was the Incident of the Cow Woman. He had arranged through a stock agent to buy a cow from an Ayrshire breeder and had gone to the breeder's farm, where he was about to load the cow for the trip home when a rampaging woman burst from the farmhouse shouting, "If that cow goes, I go with it." "I decided I didn't want both," says George, who returned home cowless. Tragedy struck when Grace died of kidney failure, leaving George with three young daughters to raise, a farm to run and not much money. "I had a hard time for a while." Salvation came in the form of Alwyn Barkman, a dark-haired beauty from Dunedin, a nurse and housekeeper, who had cared for Grace during her illness and who proved to be superbly efficient. People didn't beat around the bush in those days. "My brother told me, 'Alwyn's a great woman. You should keep her.' And that's what happened." The pair married in 1957 and raised two boys and a girl. George's family left Wrights Bush after 17 years, decamping to isolated Mt Allan Station near Hindon, northwest of Dunedin. There, on 2830 ha of excellent land, George carried out perhaps the most remarkable achievement of his life, epitomising the resourceful spirit of the do-it-yourself New Zealander. Mt Allan Station was inaccessible except by horseback. There was no road, just a rail siding at Taioma in the Taieri Gorge, on the central Otago line. The vendor had decided to sell because he was unable to find a manager to cover the station by horseback, and his application for a county road had been repeatedly turned down by Taieri County Council. George told the Otago Daily Times in 1965 that, after his first inspection of the property, "I was forced to the conclusion that if a road were to be built, the owner would have to carry out the task himself." Back in Invercargill he bought a 23-tonne D8 crawler-tractor, which had to be juggled slowly up the narrow Taieri Gorge by rail on the back of a flat-bed freight truck. With George astride the bulldozer yelling warnings to the engine driver each time the blades started scraping the rock walls of the gorge, they crept, inch by inch, to the Taioma siding. George started work on the road lacking even the most basic knowledge of engineering. He simply followed a sheep track across the rugged, steep terrain, some of it like granite, some of it crumbling "rotten rock", debris from which almost buried the crawler. He was lucky to get out without serious injury. The road snaked from 50 m above sea level at its lowest point to more than 300 m at its highest. "In some places it was as steep as the side of a hen's face." During much of the construction George camped on the job, sleeping under a covering strung between the crawler and a jeep. He completed this 7 km mission in two weeks. Two years later the family again moved on, to Nimrod Downs Station in South Canterbury, where, at age 50, George confronted and beat the only vice that had ever infected his life: tobacco. There were no nicotine patches in those days, and he didn't use chewing gum or sweets. He used walnuts. "I used to crush walnuts in my hands to do something with my fingers, and the tang of walnut in my mouth helped." After 16 years at Nimrod Downs, George and Alwyn opted for an easier life, running motels in Timaru. But you can't keep a man of the wide-open spaces cooped up in little boxes, and before long George was back out on the highways and byways, driving tour buses from Cape Reinga to Bluff. This he did for the next 10 years. Today, retirement sits uneasily on his shoulders, but his hovercraft takes him back to the land that he loves. For the summer of 2005, he and Alwyn have planned a few trips away in their campervan with hovercraft in tow. "I want to do the southern lakes Tekapo, Wanaka, Wakatipu—and the big rivers like the Clutha, the Waiau and the Waitaki." The 3 m-long hovercraft has a 50 hp light-aircraft motor, a top speed of 80 kph, and cost $38,000. George uses it for fishing and generally hooning around. "You can go anywhere in it—water, land, mud—no problems. You can go out in your slippers and not get your feet wet." Recently, he bought a bicycle too. Bright red with cream tyres. Got it for $11.50 at the Timaru auctions. Riding home after a few plonks with his mates at the Timaru RSA, he took a spill. Walking inside, bruised, grazed and bleeding, the old horseman told his wife: "The bike threw me!"