This is an outstandin topic and just the place I can post my archaeolgical and geolgocial field trips. I have several.. Thank you for thinking of this one!

Kia Ora Koutou It's been a bit... Naku na, Rob

In case you were wondering...Kia Ora Koutou roughly translates to "Welcome to the People" . . . I looked it up in google. Naku na is a greeting? It has been a bit! Welcome back Rob.

hi rob!

Kia Ora "Naku na" means yours sincerely in Maori. I haven't been here for more than 2 years (and boy is Marcia going to get a surprise...), so this is the best greeting I can give. Quite a lot has happened in the time I have been gone. For those who knew that I was doing an undergraduate degree in Geography when I left here, I was awarded it in April 2004. I am now finishing a Post-graduate Diploma of Science in Hazard and Disaster Management. Europe in 2008. Rob

congratulations rob, that is AWESOME!!

Hi all I have noted new hazards in New Zealand, which I will describe in the appropriate topic shortly. They relate to the geomorphology in New Zealand, where the wet West Coast climate, combined with the dynamic geology of the Southern Alps is seriously testing the long term viability of Franz Josef as a town in its current location. Shortly, I will mention my North American sojourn of 2004, which was really a sprint through 7 states in 16 days, and 3000 miles of driving. It would have been 23 days but Grandma died, though by the time we left, Mum, Dad and I had seen the gist of what we wanted to anyway. It involved the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon and Washington state. We may have entered Montana when we were in Yellowstone, but I am not sure. Rob

Rob, this is fantastic and wonderful. We Knew you could do it! You have seen my son's second favorite (currently) place on earth - Yellowstone. I'd love to see it sometime. Hawaii did not make your list of states visited, and for that I am most sorry. With or without my tour guiding, Kilauea was worth the trip. I'm sorry about your grandmother. Please accept our sympahties.

Kia Ora all I have an idea for another topic in Geo, but don't see a button on the menu for creating new topics. Geomorphology is the study of how land forms evolve and change - I know it has several branches like fluvial geomorphology, but when 250,000 cubic metres of rock falls off for example is that not an act in the evolution of the surrounding landscape? Or what about when a debris avalanche plugs a river, forcing it to either over top the dam or find a new course? Rob

I'll create it and help you figure out why you don't have a new topic button. I'll log in as a new user and test this.

Terry leave my cfadmin stuff as it is. We set it up like it is with only you and me and wer (and John of Grrece) able to create topics. Ihad trouble with one very fundamentalist Welshman and had to delete all of the stuff he wrote. Thank you.

Rob should have an enter button. He has created topics here previously. Must be gremlins!

Actually, where ever wer is listed as a host, that username should be deleted. It does weird things when the password is reset. If any current hosts of those conferences would still like me as a backup, just replace wer with weroland.

Ok thanks... I'll go check and correct as needed on Geo and SpringArk, and crafts and garden conferences too since I seem to be involved with them, oh and History too. Yes ! I want you for Geo backup. Please! Thank you !!

Well that was pretty miserable. Only cfadm can add you, and for some reason you are no longer listed. Terry, I can't change it but can you add weroland to the list of people allowed to backup Geo. Thanks.

I got rid of some of the wers for security reasons before, but I don't think I got them all.

As I discovered some time ago, you were pretty well expunged from Geo. Wherever Terry is on a spring Sunday afternoon he is not here. I guess we will just have to wait. *shuggling cards* What do you want to play?

i don't remember who was backup on springark, crafts, and garden, hmmmm....been awhile since i've done any admin type stuff, i wonder if i remember! oh, let's play rummy...

I can go look too. I am afraid he removed himself from everything we were on.

So do you still need weroland added here or other places?

Please add him to Geo. Thanks.

and crafts, and springArk, and garden

! .crafts.cf 0 spring5,MarciaH,wolf,cfadm,wer,weroland public ! .Geo.cf 0 terry,MarciaH,ratthing,cfadm,wer,weroland public ! .SpringArk.cf 0 terry,cfadm,wolf,riette,stacey,MarciaH,wer,weroland public ! .garden.cf 0 terry,sprin5,cfadm,wolf,MarciaH,wer,weroland public

I think that's it.

Looks very good. Now fix his cooking conference so he can get into it and work on it. I'm certain he will do us proud and it will be fun to have him active again.

Kia Ora I was going to send the pics from Franz Josef last night, but the ADSL connection said a network plug had come out, just five hours after Craig (my brother)fixed an earlier problem. 12 hours later and still no connection, and since Craig is at work it will have to wait a bit. Okay. So in the absence of those photos, I will put up a post of the trip last year to Franz Josef, to describe what I saw on the ground. We left Christchurch in overcast conditions on March 19, and headed inland. After about an hour, we crossed the Porters Pass Fault on the west side of Porters Pass and the cloud began to lift somewhat. The convoy of minivans that was carrying the field trip goers stopped near Lake Grassmere to examine a gully with a steep debris fan coming out of it. Not an ideal place to build as in recent times judging by the lack of vegetation on the fan, it appeared that a number of smaller spills had occurred. The convoy drove into Arthurs for morning tea and then up to the lookout near the Otira viaduct - built in 1999 to replace the notorious hair pins section of State Highway 73, it ran 440 metres down a river bed flanked by ancient rockfalls, 900 metres above sea level and in a high precipitation zone, it is a feat of NZ engineering. Impressive work, but in a place I would pay good money not to be in an earthquake. From there we drove to Hokitika for lunch, and then turned southwest towards Franz Josef. The next port of call was to see a house on the edge of an active debris fan and the mitigatory work done to protect the highway. A heavy rainstorm one night had caused a slip in the gully behind the house, which trapped the rainwater and then emptied explosively in a sudden dam burst flood which left rocks the size of car wheels just ten metres from the house some 500 metres away. Transit (NZ road authority)built a stopbank to deflect lesser events away from the road - how effective it is, is yet to be known. Down the road was a more serious case of fluvial geomorphology in action. A gentleman farmer on the flats of the Poerua (Po-e-ru-a) River whose property is being slowly eaten up by the river, told us about a landslide dam above his property in 1999. That year, while I was still in high school a dam had plugged the river gorge to a depth of several metres causing water to pile up. The guy said that Civil Defence evacuated the valley briefly, incase of dam failure, but it over topped peacefully instead of bursting. A few days later however it rained, and the dam did fail. The movement of sediment through the gorge started a process of aggradation where erosion in the river bed progressively worked up stream carving out a new channel and aiming the river at his property. Over the following five years the river has progressively eaten across the farm, and the land is up for sale but no one wants it. He and his wife will quit when the river reaches their shed. From there we drove to the field station at Harihari (Ha-re-ha-re) where we were going to overnight. Played cricket on the lawn for an hour or two and then went down to the pub for dinner. Watched the rugby and left at midnight, having probably provided half the business for the night. Somehow on the way back someone managed to lose their underwear in the stream running through an adjacent property - what they were doing in it is beyond me. The next day, we crossed the Alpine Fault and drove into Franz Josef. The town is one of the few in the world that can claim to sit on TWO tectonic plates, though no one wants to know what will happen when the boundary does a boogie. We drove over the Waiho River on the south side of the river and up to the Franz Josef Glacier. In light rain we walked up a rock in the riverbed that had had the side facing the glacier sheared off smoothly and listened to a brief description of the glacial processes in the valley. Following that we drove down to a condemned motor camp nestled in against the stop bank on the south side of the Waiho (Y-ho)River. It is in a dodgy place with a dodgy stop bank to protect it - no good. It or the stop bank - or both - must give way, and since the stop effectively reduces the rivers width to 1/3, it will be the bank that fails in a flood. A 1-in-5 year flood could do it, but the scariest scenario involves a damburst flood in the Callery gorge which might peak at 3000 cubic metres per second. The flood would not just be water - it would be carrying boulders, vegetation and anything else loose on the riverbed. It would arrive within 2 minutes of the dam burst, and the scariest part of this already scary scenario is on a rainy night when it is hosing down in a thunderstorm outside, no one in Franz Josef would even know the difference since the noise of the storm would drown out the rumble of the dam failing. After hearing all of this, we drove back into town for lunch and then back to Christchurch. My interest geomorphology in action had been pricked. How cool to actually SEE with your own eyes, these processes in action - and how scary it must be as a property owner to know there is not a damn thing you can do about it other than move to more mundane settings. Rob

Riveting.