Visiting Cluden - October 18th

En route to Cluden - Looking across Lake Dunstan
Note the high terraces

I got back from Central Otago today. I had an excellent visit with Mark and Dhana. On Tuesday we went up to Cluden up near Lindis Pass (just over an hours drive from Alex) where Mark's family has (over many years) established a small camp. His brother had dropped three giant willows, and our task was to cut them up and deal with the consequent tree mess. After a hard days work everything was organized so that another brother could go and burn the small stuff and relocate/pile and split the rest of the wood. Afterwards Mark went fishing and Dhana and I went to take a look at some Maori petroglyphs on some nearby rocks.

Before (well, not quite - you can see
the pile resulting from work already
done

Cluden - almost done

Maori petroglyphs near Cluden

On Wednesday Dhana and I went to explore some old gold diggings - I had a particular task in mind. I got very interested in the erosional and depositional history, and I wanted to look for evidence of erosion by moving water prior to deposition of the gravels. We went along the south / west side of the Clutha and snuck onto some land there are some old gold workings.

View across Clutha River towards Graveyard Gully. It
looked menacing all day but never rained.

Then we went further down the Clutha River and went up a small creek to another old mine / working (Ketts Mine). Always amazing how much work they did. We poked around there looking at stuff for an hour or so.

Old workings at Ketts Mine - note all the schist
piled along the walls of the tail-race

In the afternoon we went just across the Manuherikea river so I could collect some good conglomerate samples for the SCSU teaching collection  - BUT it is also a conglomerate that contains gold in the basal unit. so we spent quite a while collecting samples. When we got back, we crushed the samples, and then panned them - I got a few flecks of gold, but no nuggets. Rats.

Typing in my gloves - October 14th 2012

View of Portobello Peninsula
from the public bench in Portobello

I have to admit that I am missing my warm, centrally heated house. They don't heat the Department over the weekend, and my office is very cold. About as cold as my flat/room. Right now it isn't bad outside, but the room has never warmed up, and I am typing with my gloves on. Kind of makes it hard for me to think properly. 

View back up the harbour (i.e. to the SW) towards Dunedin
Picture taken en route to Portobello.

After a grey start to the day, some blue sky showed up (between clouds), and it wasn't raining, so I took the public bus out to Portobello (small 'townlet' on the Otago Peninsula, which is itself beside a small peninsula which is the home to the Otago University Portobello Marine Laboratory. I just spent a while walking, poking around, then turned around and got the bus back. Very nice to get out. 

Ads for Moroccan Lamb Burgers ......

Other trivia include: All the ads I am seeing for a MacDonalds Lamb Burger (don't worry, I haven't gone over to the dark side). I bet they aren't available in the US ? Or are they having a big push there too - it is because they are trying to open up the market to non-beef eating cultures.  

Penguin in downtown Dunedin

Also, the penguin sculptures in downtown Dunedin. The title is "You are not alone" The road to Milford Sound was closed because of rockfall (see pic from TV above). I will take a break for a couple of days because I have completely hit the wall, and need a change of scenery - I am not making any progress. Dhana is in town tomorrow, and I will get a ride back up to Central Otago with her and spend a couple of nights in Alex with her and Mark.

That is a bicycle

Elevator buttons in the Geology Department.
Thus far I have resisted adding an
alternative set of destinations
 (atmospheric layers, going up from the basement).
Maybe the emergency button should read
'Meteorite Impact' ?

One Figure (i.e. one map) Thurs 11th Oct

Location Map for Eyre Creek
drafted by yours truly in Adobe Illustrator.

Yeehah. VERY SLOW progress, but on the left you see the fruits of my labours! This location map (Figure 1 of 12 in the paper)  took all day. BUT I made multiple errors, and I think I have learned from them, so it should start getting faster. I gave my first draft to a colleage here to look through and they went through it - lots of suggestions for changes. Uggh. But they are all good comments - just means lots more work on it. And thinking.

It is still grey and wet and cold. Everyone is whining about it - wettest and coldest October since 2003.

Minnesota friends: I have a question. There are dasies everywhere growing in the grass. I swear we don't have dasies in our grass in Minnesota. Just dandelions and other stuff. Am I just forgetting?

The grass. Note all the daisies.

Slow Cold Wet day Tues Oct 9th

View out my window this morning.

Well, it was very grey, cold, and wet this morning. Really hard to get out of bed. The dryer at my flat is broken so I had the choice of damp clothes or dirty clothes. By the time I made it in to the department (I had to take care of banking and electricity bill paying) it was almost noon. I got a really useful (but horribly demanding) review of my first draft back for the Eyre Creek mss. Ugghh. Lots to do still - tons to fix. I decided to focus on drafting figures today. Humph. Because I am not really adept and savvy with GIS, the only way for me to create the location map I wanted (with geology on it) was to compile it on paper. I am sure there must be a quicker way. I am going to scan my compiled version, and then actually draft it in Illustrator. This is going to take forever! The good thing that came out of it was that I had an AHA MOMENT about the geology as I was doing this.

You probably can't see all the detail, but
this was the result of my work today.
Lots of time, little to show for it.

My office / desk. I had five different
 maps spread out as I tried to selectively
compile data from all of them together.

On a more upbeat note, I think I have found accomodation for when I am in Christchurch after new year. It is a small cottage that a GNS scientist bought because they were seconded to Christchurch because of Earthquake work (or at least that is my understanding). They couldn't find a place to rent, so they ended up buying the cottage - mortgage was cheaper than rent. They will still have access and have stuff in the garage, but I will be renting it from them. No bricks, no concrete, all wood, on one level - YEAH!  I am so relieved - I had been really worried about finding a place to live there. It is 20 minutes walk from the University - and much less by bicycle. I think I'll give up for the day now and go walk downtown to the public library. It will be warm there, it is open until 8 pm.

Middlemarch - via the Taieri Gorge on Sunday 7th Oct

Dunedin railway Station. You will be noticing
a trend in the style of the old buildings.
Basalt and Limestone.

It was cold but sunny and clear this morning. Which was great, because I needed a break. Walked down the railway station, and got my ticket for the Taieri Gorge Train. Departed at 9:30 am. Northstar folks, I'm sorry, this way outdoes the Northstar for 'spectacular'. They also let us get out at several localities - and there were no fences next to the drop-off. We could also ride on the outdoor platform when we chose. Oh, and we could buy beer if we wanted too. But, it was 10 times as expensive.

On the Taieri Plain

First the train gets to and crosses the taieri Plain. Then it essentially follows the Taieri River up the Taieri Gorge.

Starting up the Taieri Gorge. The yellow stuff is gorse = bad

Hindon. Nothing (other than fish in the river) there now

You might be able to see a viaduct just ahead of the train

The train climbs and goes through a bunch of tunnels and across a bunch of viaducts.

The sign on the building says "Strath Taieri Rabbit Board"
They deal with the rabbit problem.

The first stop (not for passengers, just to let us get out and have a view) was at Hindon.










Continuing. By the way we are in Otago Schist. Mostly Textural Zone 2A and maybe some 2B. Low greenschist grade.










There really isn't much in Middlemarch - which is part of its charm. BUT I must say that if they want to go for Hobbit-related tourism, they will need to add a few places to eat and get some places where tourists can spend money.

The inside of the trains. Wood panel, pressed metal ceiling.

The inside of the coaches - all refurbished originals with wood paneling. They were comfy. But no electric outlets (I know, I am spoiled) I forgot to charge my camera battery and ended up taking all the pics on my phone.

Heading back down the gorge to Dunedin

getting to the Taieri Plain

Heading home. There was a BIG flood in 1980. The Taieri rose 10 m (yes, ten meters) in 24 hours. The last station (Sheep station that is) up here was washed away. The family sold the land and it has been planted in pines. The trees on the riverbanks are mostly willows.

Walking to the geology department - I went past the
Cadbury factory. Yes, they do tours.
No, I am not going to do one.

Slowly winding down onto the Taieri Plain. The hills here are related to the Dunedin Volcano /
volcanic center (extinct)








We got back at 3:30 pm precisely so I headed over to the geology department - I needed to finish up the references on Eyre Creek. Refworks is kind of funky - well, I am not good at reading the manual. I have got a reference list done, and I have emailed it off for review before I submit it. Now I need to draft all the figures. Ugghh. Hopefully I will get that done this week. I am not going to succumb to the Cadburys Tour.

Did not watch the you-know-what. Friday Oct 5th

My office desk yesterday. My laptop, large screen belongs
to the Geology Department. This was when I was trying to
get YouTube to work.

I tried to watch the you-know-what last night (well, it was 2 pm my time) on YouTube, and there were horrible bandwidth problems resulting in 20 second snatches of alien-robot sounding language, so I gave up. I just worked (sort of) with Dan Rather's facebook comments popping up every now and then as I wordsmithed. All a bit dismal. I was disappointed. This morning I got a newspaper (I know, I can get the news online, but I love reading a physical newspaper). I had somehow thought there might be something about the debates on the front page, but no, I am in New Zealand after all.

Evening light on the old University buildings (the 'Registry' -
which is old speak for Administration) as I left this evening.

On to more interesting things, which includes the fact that I have been to four seminars this week. It is really fun. In one I learned about how they have determined the uplift rate along the alpine fault, in another I learned that quartz has lots of impurities and the amount (in parts-per-million of those impurities - such as titanium - can be used to determine the temperature that the quartz has most recently - geologically speaking - been subjected to. Then today I learned about the current research at Wairakei Geothermal Institute in the Taupo Volcanic Zone.

Most of the University looks more like this.
Concrete 50's, 60's and more recent buildings.

In other work news, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel for the Eyre Creek paper. I should be able to finish the conclusion and get the references done tomorrow. Then I have to make all the tables pretty and draft all the figures. I am hoping that won't take longer than a week. Progress.

In other news, Dunedin is clearly a magnet for conventions. It was the New Zealand Parking Association Annual Conference yesterday. Note: in yesterday's paper there was a report of a parking enforcer having their gadget stolen and thrown in the lake at Queenstown by a disgruntled parkee.

Otherwise, it seems like animals have been having a hard time (I've heard of all sorts of things falling off the back of a truck, but calves?). I won't bore you with the myriad of lamb stories - anyone would think it was a slow news day - mostly about dogs worrying sheep.

They are looking at pictures o f 'interesting' parking jobs

Calves unhurt after falling off vehicle

Okay. It shouldn't upload in this orientation.
BUT, the point is that if I was in Alex this
weekend I would go to the merino shearing
competition. 

My plan for the weekend: finish the text of the manuscript tomorrow. Then, as long as the weather is okay (it doesn't even have to be good) I'll take the Otago Excursion train up to Middlemarch and back. They filmed some of the Hobbit movie (due out in November or December) up in Middlemarch, and they are hoping for a tourism boom there.

Bits-N-Bobs ... Weds 3rd Oct

Poster for Otago University Student President Elections
He was the runner-up

So it is the 3rd October here, but it won't be the 3rd yet in the US for some time. That means we get to watch the Debate that takes place on the 3rd around lunchtime into early afternoon on the 4th October. I'm not sure whether I will watch it - if I can find a place it is being broadcast - other than in a pub. In the meantime I was thoroughly entertained by a student piece in the Otago Student Magazine about US Politics and the election. It is easy reading, and good entertainment, and gives you insight into Kiwi student perspectives.




Go to: http://www.critic.co.nz/features/article/2497/a-beginners-guide-to-the-american-presidential-ele

View across the Leith to the University Staff Club

As far as work goes, I finally realized (I'm slow sometimes, or just stubborn!), that the only way to get manuscripts completed is to complete them. So after dabbing in Northwest nelson for a while, I got back to Eyre Creek and I have been hunkered down all week just going through it. Slow going - and TONS of papers to read as I do it.  If Ben's friend Ethan can run 93 miles in 27 hours, 19 minutes, 19 seconds (I don't know how he does it) -  he just completed the fastest known time for a complete, unsupported circumnavigation of Mount Rainier - then I can get this done.



Go to: http://beyondtheranges.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/wonderland-trail-fkt-927-928/

Window display in a knick-knack store. I don't think one
would ever see this in the US.

Oh, and the most unsettling thing last. On my way home from St. Clair the other day (Sunday) I spotted this display in a knick-knack store window. I was absolutely stunned. Gobsmacked. Actually puzzled.
My first reaction was horror - how could race continue to presented like this ? The dolls reminded me of the statuettes we got with Robertsons Jam labels when I was a child in the UK (I just cringe when I look back on that). Then I tried to argue with myself that there were 'white' rag dolls in the window too, and why, after all, should there not be both white and black dolls. Anyway, it was Sunday, and the shop was closed, so I have been left to live with my reflections. I really do wonder if the owners have any idea about what their display signified.