What insects have the tusks of an elephant, can weigh as much as a thrush and yet live like mice? Only the New Zealand weta. As many as 100 species of these thorny creatures dwell in burrows , caves and crevices, from lush islands to snowy mountain crests.
Everyday phenomena can take on extraordinary dimensions, depending on how you see them. The "sun trail" image shown above (top) was produced by Brian Donovan and Max Osborne of the University of Auckland's Audio Visual Centre. Brian Donovan, in particular, has had a long-standing interest in night sky and sun photography, and it was he who conceived the idea of the photograph—one taken with an ultra-wide angle lens which would record not only the sun's passage across the sky for a day, but include a landscape as well. Producing such an image is not straightforward. Any direct shot of the sun, no matter how brief, is usually completely overexposed, so a continuous 12-hour exposure sounds impossible. Using extremely dark filters could make it feasible, but then all one would have would be a bright semicircle on a completely black background. Brian and Max decided that the answer could lie in making three exposures on one frame of film. Two exposures would be brief and unfiltered: one before dawn and one after sunset, to lighten sectors of the sky and provide some foreground. The main exposure would be for 12 hours and would require heavy filtration, but would add the arcing image of the sun's trail. Brian first tested the feasibility of this approach with some simpler shots that could be taken with normal cameras. One, taken from the Auckland Harbour Bridge off-ramp below Pt Erin, is a double exposure of sunrise in midsummer. The moonrise over Rangitoto is from Milford Beach. Photographing the all-day sun trail was much more demanding. For a start, it had to be taken in winter, between the autumn and spring equinoxes, as during the rest of the year the sunrise and sunset points are more than 180° apart. But the camera provided the real headache. A 16 mm fisheye lens was to be used, and filters cannot be placed in front of this type of lens. Hence a special camera had to be constructed with neutral density filters carried behind the lens on a sliding carriage. Max executed the manufacture of the camera. In addition, they had to find a site where the camera could safely be left unattended, as neither of them was sufficiently obsessed about obtaining this picture that they were prepared to sit beside a camera for more than 12 hours. In the event, a relatively secure position on top of the University of Auckland's Physics building was used, and they could only hope that passing pigeons would reject the camera as a perch (or worse . . .) The camera was mounted on a tripod, aimed at north, and a 30-second unfiltered exposure was made 30 minutes before sunrise. This exposure also recorded a waning gibbous moon, as well as cloud which mercifully disappeared later. The neutral density filters were then positioned behind the lens, the aperture adjusted, and the lens uncapped for the all-day exposure Finally, 30 minutes after sunset, another 30-second unfiltered exposure was made of the scene. All the city's buildings and fixed light sources had, as a result, two exposures. The result is one of the more unusual records of September 7, 1993.
On summer nights the sky is dominated by the bright constellation of Orion, the Hunter. Traditionally, he is seen wielding a club with his right hand and holding a lion's skin with his left as he faces the charging bull, Taurus. Marking the bull's head, which lies a hand's breadth west of Orion, are the Hyades, a V-shaped group which is also distinguished by the bright orange star, Aldebaran, the bull's left eye. The great horns loom threateningly over Orion's head, and the massive hump of the shoulders is marked by the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters. For southern observers this dramatic tableau is upside down, and so the figures are far from obvious. To us, Taurus appears as the two bright clusters, the Pleiades and the Hyades, and Orion is reduced to his belt and sword, commonly seen as the humble Pot. Whether they depict military hardware or domestic kitchenware, the constellations with which the sky has been patterned are mere artifacts of our position in the galaxy. Were we able to change our position by a few hundred light years then the night sky would be totally unfamiliar, for the nearer stars would fall into quite different patterns. It was not until 1838 that the first measurement of the distance of a star from Earth was able to be made. In that year Friedrich Bessel measured the distance of 61 Cygni using the technique of trigonometric parallax. Since then, refinements in instrumentation and the introduction of new techniques have enabled us to model the galaxy in three dimensions, and to locate the position of our solar system within the observable universe. Five thousand years ago this model was unguessed at by the peoples of the emerging civilisations of the fertile crescent, the Indus valley, China and the Americas. For them the idea of a simple celestial sphere was unavoidable, the stars fixed in their positions upon it and their relationship to the all-important cycle of the seasons self-evident. Thus a rich fabric of associations and mythology was woven, and each centre of civilisation patterned the sky with constellations of varying significance. Fixed though the stars may appear to be, nevertheless the overall picture relative to the seasons gradually changes owing to the fact that the axis of rotation of the Earth is not fixed in space but, like a child's gyroscope, wanders in a circle, taking about 25,800 years for each cycle. In 3000Bc, Aldebaran, the bull's bloodshot left eye, marked the sun's position at the spring equinox, and was called by the Babylonians I-ku-u, the leading star of stars. The name we use today is a corruption of the Arabic Al Dabaran, the Follower (of the Pleiades), since by 1000AD the position of the spring equinox had moved into the constellation Aries and so was no longer seen as associated with the bull's eye. Amongst the constellations and other lesser groupings of stars recognised by the ancients, the Pleiades and the Hyades are unique in being composed of physically associated stars rather than chance conjunctions of stars at widely different distances from us. The Pleiades, M45, often called the Seven Sisters (for all that a keen eye under ideal conditions can see 11), is composed of hot young blue stars. Invisible to the naked eye but showing on photographs are luminous wisps of dust swathing the stars. Striated like some celestial cirrostratus, this nebulosity appears to map the magnetic fields around the various stars. The dramatic vee of the Hyades is actually a composite pattern. The majority of the stars belong to a galactic or open cluster about 130 light years away. However, Aldebaran, a Taurii, the lucida or brightest star of the constellation, is not of the company, being an orange giant only 65 light years distant. About three times the mass of the sun, it is bloated by the onset of old age to about 40 times the sun's diameter. Although apparently similar to nearby Betelgeuse, a Orionis, Aldebaran is but a baby in terms of mass, and so is denied the terminal splendour of a supernova explosion, but will die of hiccups. With the exhaustion of its hydrogen, the core will contract and reach a temperature of about 100,000,000 Kelvin, initiating helium fusion. The sudden onset of this process is termed the helium flash, and it leads to a carbon core surrounded by a dense envelope of helium undergoing fusion. Being an inherently unstable phase, the temperature of this composite core fluctuates and the now extended atmosphere, mainly the remnants of the original hydrogen, is blown off into space as a series of concentric shells. When the fusible fuels are exhausted and the atmosphere has dissipated into space, all that remains will be a white dwarf, a sphere of superdense material composed of carbon nuclei and a degenerate electron gas—a swarm of electrons no longer bound to the nuclei of atoms. With a temperature of about 12,000 Kelvin this object will shine whitely, but, being small, will be so dim as to be scarcely visible from Earth. Long before the eye of the bull is closed, the Hyades will have parted company from Aldebaran, for most of the stars forming the vee are in relatively rapid motion towards a vanishing point which is a little to the east of Betelgeuse. Measurements by H.G. van Bueren in 1952 showed that this common motion is shared by 132 stars scattered over an area of sky about 15° in diameter. More recent studies have greatly increased the membership of this cluster, which has a space motion of 26 km/s. The clear inference of this common motion is that these stars are all members of the same "family"—that is, that they were all formed in the same volume of space from a gas/dust cloud whose motion they perforce imitate. Being formed in the same parent cloud,these stars will all be effectively of the same age. The scatter of "birth dates" may be several million years, but stellar life spans are typically measured in billions of years, so a million years is neither here nor there. Since stars formed from the same parent material will have the same chemical composition, their development as they age and the differences which they exhibit one from another will be a function of their masses. The greater the mass of a star, the shorter its life, for high mass means greater internal pressures and hence greater core temperatures where the fusion of hydrogen to helium is occurring. Since stars live so very much longer than we or even our civilisations do, we cannot hope to disentangle their life histories by just observing them as individuals. However, the study of a same age population with its members evolving at different rates provides us with clues we need. Being so close, we have been able to measure the along and across line-ofsight velocities of the individual members of the cluster, and also to determine the convergent, or vanishing, point accurately. From this data, individual stellar distances have been calculated, and from these the absolute magnitude of each star, i.e. its brightness at the standard distance of 10 parsecs (32.6 light years). Spectroscopic examination, such as is performed at Canterbury University's Mount John Observatory, reveals both the spectral class and surface temperature of a star, and from these data both the size and the mass of a star can be determined. Because they are, astronomically speaking, so accessible, the Hyades have been one of the key targets for astrophysicists searching for clues to the life cycles of the stars. As their analysis unfolds, we pass from myth to mass, from the intriguing pattern of the celestial wallpaper to the absorbing quest for a coherent understanding of the workings of our galaxy and its constituents, and thence outward to the limits of observability.
Flood waters roared through the business district of Kaikoura on the evening of Thursday December 23, sucking 300 kg industrial refrigerators through shop windows "like torpedoes" according to one eyewitness. Rocks from a retaining wall uprooted petrol pumps set in concrete at the BP station. Civil Defence sailed a 7.5 m charter yacht down the main street to rescue shop owners as flood waters rose. Silt and debris 30 cm deep was left through much of the town, and the refrigerators, taken out to sea by the flood, were blown back by the wind and strewn along the high tide mark as far as 10 km away. The same depression brought heavy rain to most eastern areas of the South Island and a record flood in Otago's Taieri River, where newly completed floodwater control gates worth $150,000 collapsed into the river. In central Otago, a flash flood brought thousands of tons of boulders, mud, and silt down Slaughterhouse Creek near Roxburgh. When the wall of water hit the culvert under State Highway 8, spray shot more than 10 metres into the air, causing power lines to arc and cutting power to the district. A 30-ton boulder was left in the middle of the road. Two weeks later, torrential rain in Fiordland and Westland spilled across the Alps into western Otago and Canterbury. Massive slips cut the roads to Milford and Haast, isolating hundreds of tourists who were later brought out by boat and plane. Lightning, which lasted 16 hours along the Alps, cut electricity in many areas and started a number of small fires. A power surge as far away as Christchurch caused the Park Royal Hotel to be evacuated when fire alarms were triggered. One of the worst-hit farms was Makarora Station above Lake Wanaka. Some 1300 sheep were drowned in a riverside paddock when the Makarora River burst over its stopbank, and a bull worth $6000 was killed by lightning. Hundreds of cubic metres of silt and gravel washed down from the mountains, destroying 20 km of fencing as it covered paddocks and yards and replacing 15 tonnes of superphosphate in a shed. A fortnight later,Milford had its highest ever 24-hour rainfall with 538 mm on January 22, and Colliers Creek near Hokitika had 682 mm—more than the average Christchurch rainfall for an entire year. On the plus side, the hydro lakes received plenty of water and are expected to have no trouble supplying electricity this winter. Also, floods in the Arrow River eroded fresh gravel into the riverbed, producing a minor gold rush with $3000-worth of gold being taken in a few weeks. The January rains on the West Coast were caused partly by a large slow-moving anticyclone east of the orth Island that extended a ridge to the north of the Tasman Sea.This produced persistent northwest winds over the Tasman Sea which transported warm air with high water vapour content from the tropics to New Zealand.The water vapour condensed to rain as the air was lifted over the Southern Alps. The persistent northwest winds also helped to raise the sea surface temperatures west of New Zealand. This in turn helped raise the air temperatures over New Zealand. The average temperature for all New Zealand in December had been 1° below average at 14.6°C. However, January was 0.4° above average at 17.3°C. Temperatures were especially high in the east of the North Island, where daily maximums were often above 30°C. Water had to be trucked to places in the Gisborne area, and in Hawkes Bay apples suffered from sunburn and baking. As the Waipawa River dried up, fish trapped in pools had to be rescued by staff from the Hawkes Bay Fish and Game Council. In the last week of January and the first half of February, the anticyclones shifted further poleward and moved slowly east across the South Island, bringing periods of easterly winds, clear skies and high temperatures to the Manawatu. Railway lines buckled near Hunterville on February 15 when air temperatures are estimated to have exceeded 30°C in sheltered places, and the temperature of the steel rails is likely to have reached around 45°C. Thirteen freight wagons were derailed, damaging 519 metres of track and closing the main trunk line. Freight traffic was diverted to the Stratford line, but that was closed by another derailment near Wanganui the following afternoon. A period of dry weather set in over the West Coast, and after three weeks without rain water was having to be trucked to some residents in Westport. February temperatures continued to be above average over much of the country. In Wellington the average daily maximum temperature was 1.4° above normal, and New Zealand Breweries reported its packaged beer sales rose by almost 12 per cent. Severe hailstorms were also a feature of the summer, particularly in Canterbury, Nelson and Hawkes Bay. The most damaging occurred in Hawkes Bay, where hailstones the size of golf balls destroyed most of the fruit in hundreds of orchards. Vineyards were luckier, with only five out of 120 affected. Damage is expected to be around $50 million, and an estimated 1000 jobs have been lost. Although hail occurred in the last two summers, large hail was rare, partly because both air and sea temperatures were below average as a result of cooling from the combined effects of an El Nifio event and the ash cloud from the Mount Pinatubo eruption. This summer, El Niflo had finished and the Pinatubo ash cloud had retreated poleward, so temperatures were up. Warmer air temperatures and higher water vapour content because of warmer seas both contribute significantly to the energy available to intensify a developing thunderstorm. They are further intensified by cold air in the middle atmosphere, and a number of the hailstorms occurred with extremely cold temperatures at 6000 m. This cold air aloft spread over New Zealand from the south, and therefore came from a region that may still be under the influence of the Pinatubo ash cloud. Another outbreak of hail on March 7 affected Canterbury, Marlborough and Wellington. Thunder and lightning lasted several hours in the capital. Only minor damage was reported, but one lightning bolt struck the Shelly Bay Airforce Base, blowing a hole in some concrete and setting the wind sock alight.
It was a great invention. Everybody said so. Even the cowboy described it as neat. The boss had made it from an old motorbike engine, a small gear pump and the tank from an old "Wizard" lighting plant. Although it was somewhat ponderous, he'd managed to fix the whole concern on to a packsaddle which in turn was to be fixed on to the massive back of the old horse, Captain. In actual fact this portable weed-sprayer had been conceived and manufactured with Captain as the motive force that was to take it from place to place. Without him, it could never have seen the light of day. Captain was a wise old horse and had been with us for many years. In fact few could imagine the place without him. Nobody knew whether he was a full or three-quarter draught, or just some equine accident that placed him midway between the two. His head was a study of quaint, rather pleasing ugliness. One ear stood up and the other hung down and his nose was Roman to the extreme. During his long hours of meditation his nether lip hung down a full inch below his upper and a trickle of green saliva dripped constantly from it. His body however was a thing of beauty, with power in every line. On many occasions he'd been known to pull a dray loaded with a ton of spuds over the freshly-dug paddock, going down almost on to his belly to overcome the initial inertia while the skin on his rump puckered up in great wrinkles as he heaved the load into motion. Of the many and varied jobs on the station, Captain had done the lot. He had packed in the provisions and sledged out the injured. He had packed posts and battens from the bush where he had only to be shown the track once and thereafter could make it alone, cunningly edging his load round trees, and either stopping or leaving the track where he thought the trees were growing too close to accommodate the width of his load. He'd pulled motor cars from the bogs and on one occasion pulled a tractor up a slope which it was unable to climb unaided. On that occasion onlookers swore that for a brief moment an expression of hauteur spread over his ugly old face as he did so. So you can see how the new sprayer came to be built round the old horse, and how it subsequently proved to be useless without him. When the packsaddle was first put upon him and the contraption bolted into place, he displayed no particular interest. He'd borne varied and curious loads before. However, when the boss wound the cord round the flywheel and started the motor, his droopy ear became briefly erect for some moments before dropping back to its former position of disinterest. Except that he vibrated unavoidably in unison with the engine, he chose to ignore the whirring, snarling load altogether. When the boss took the spraying wand and gave the climbing rose that framed the stable door an experimental squirt, he took no notice whatever. Early next morning the spraying expedition started out. The cowboy led Captain, the handyman stood by to use the wand, and the shepherd led another packhorse loaded with two cream cans of replenishing spray. The boss also went along, partly to observe the efficiency of his brainchild, but chiefly because he was the only one who could cope with the vagaries of the motor. All through the morning, things went well. They sprayed weeds in the gullies, on the hillsides, and on the tops of the highest crags where no one had had the heart to carry a knapsack sprayer before. Twice the shepherd had to take the packhorse home for more spray. Everybody was in high spirits. It appeared as if they'd do in a day work that had taken a week with the old knapsack sprayers. The straps of these knapsack sprayers cut cruelly into a man's shoulders, and the glands leaked spray on your back every time the handle was pumped. At that time hormone sprays had not been introduced, and the manufacturers relied upon a product composed chiefly of kerosene with any odd corrosives thrown in that they happened to have on hand. The nozzles blocked constantly, and when you peered down the holes to try and locate the obstruction, a knapsack sprayer always seemed to be able to conjure up a little extra pressure from somewhere—enough to squirt a little jet of liquid into your eye. Even with the new sprayer, this fault was not entirely eliminated, and with the increased pressure from the engine, a lot more vapour-drift was evident. This sometimes enveloped the old horse, but although he emerged from it blinking frantically while big tears ran down his cheeks, he offered no complaint. It may, however, have been a contributing factor towards his stepping on the stake that ripped his leg open from fetlock to kneebone. Poor old Captain, game to the last. Everybody was concerned, the cowboy so much so that he unhesitatingly tore up his only shirt for a bandage. He and the shepherd took the packsaddle with the sprayer still attached, while the boss explored the wound for any fragments of wood before bandaging it. When they'd all done what they could, the men surveyed the gloomy prospect of going home for the knapsack sprayers to finish the small area still to be done. Finally the boss decided that they would put the sprayer on Nigger, the other packhorse and, as the boss put it, "see how he went." None of the others had dared make this suggestion because they already had a rough idea of how Nigger would go. Compared with old Captain's pure gold, this other horse was base metal indeed; and as for the sprayer, why, he hated the sight of it. The engine had to be stopped before he could be induced to come near enough for a transfer of spray. Nobody was surprised therefore when he had to be blindfolded before they could get the packhorse saddle in place. The boss made a personal inspection of the straps, and even managed to get the girth up another couple of holes after the shepherd declared it to be "hog-tight." The cowboy kicked footholds in the ground with his tremendous fern tight boots, and shortened his grip on the lead rope. The shepherd made a final examination of the straps and the boss pulled off the blindfold. The horse did nothing. He stood and shivered. When they led him about, he moved uneasily, but offered no violence: but, as the cowboy remarked, he was "showing a lot of white in his eye." Everybody was encouraged. Things weren't going too badly. Perhaps they had misjudged the beast. "I'll just give the motor a pull and see what happens," announced the boss. The cowboy dug himself fresh footholds and the shepherd looked over the gear once again while the boss wound the cord round the flywheel and gave it a gentle tug. Everybody expected fireworks when the motor burst into a full-throated roar. Sure enough, the effect on the horse was electric. With his first lunge, Nigger lifted the cowboy with an ease that made him realise the futility of digging footholds. And then he started to buck: he was no mean bucker either. He pulled every trick out of the bag, and a few more that nobody had ever thought of. He weaved and he corkscrewed. He pig-rooted and he swapped ends. He pinwheeled and he fishtailed. He reared and he pile drove, and all the time he was squealing in a frenzy of rage and frustration. On the top of this cyclone rode the motor, and the makers must surely have never designed it to run under such conditions. Yet run it sure did. Not perfectly, it's true, but it did run. Sometimes it backfired and shot great gouts of flame from the open exhaust, and sometimes it died away to the merest whisper only to roar into life again as conditions became momentarily favourable, but it never stopped completely. Meanwhile in the eye of the storm the cowboy was putting up a stern fight. He fended and sidestepped, he ran backwards and was pulled forwards. Sometimes he became airborne, only to crash land when his aerodynamics proved inadequate, but he never relaxed his grip on that lead rope. The muscles stood out like cords on his skinny arms as he fought a silent desperate fight. The boss and the shepherd fluttered uselessly on the edge of the tumult, relying on words rather than deeds to quell its violence. The boss could do no better than a high-pitched injunction to "stick to him, boy, stick to him!" The cowboy was having difficulty in sticking to anything. The shepherd, however, was a more imaginative man, and one with a cunning if somewhat brightly-tinted turn of phrase. He described the hereditary shortcomings of the horse since its ancestor, a five-toed creature, first crawled from the primeval mud. Unfortunately, many of these gems were lost in the general pandemonium. Finally the horse abandoned the idea of getting rid of its load and sought refuge in flight. For a time the cowboy stuck with him, progressing in what the shepherd afterwards described as "flamin' great leaps and bounds." Eventually the speed of the cowboy's top half, which was taking the tension, became too great for his feet, impeded as they were by his oversize boots—and he tipped out. He sledged a further 100 yards on his stomach, but finding this a punishing method of getting over the ground, very wisely let go. Freed of his weight, Nigger gathered speed at every stride and began to accomplish piecemeal what he had set out to do in the beginning. The first thing that came loose was the hose, which trailed out behind, spraying intermittently as the trigger hit the ground. Eventually it got caught up in something and was torn from the pump, which exhausted the tank in a solid stream of liquid, shot far out to the rear. ("Jet-assisted," said the cowboy who kept himself informed on the latest developments of thrust.) The engine was still running as Nigger thundered down the ridge, but it was apparent that most of its original sting was gone. Nobody was surprised when it extinguished itself with a mighty bang as the horse disappeared over the skyline. Thereafter only faint breaking-up noises were heard until eventually these died away. "Isn't it quiet?" said the shepherd. Later on, they followed Nigger's trail home, picking up pieces here and there, commenting briefly upon their original position on the machine, and then putting them in plain sight for easy recovery. When they got home the packhorse was in the paddock, naked, foam-flecked, and triumphant. The next day they finished the spraying, using the old knapsack sprayers which seemed by comparison to be pale bloodless things. The boss never did get around to rebuilding that machine. By the time the faithful old Captain had recovered, sprayers mounted on fourwheel-drive vehicles had made their appearance, and although the boss switched over to these, he always pointed to the chains of hose that had to be pulled out by hand, and spoke glowingly of the amazing mobility of his great packhorse spraying machine, the pieces of which still lie along the track where the men left them, alone in their glory.
Kiwi cowboys have been riding, roping and wrestling on the rodeo circuit for night on 50 years.to these down-under marlboro men, rodeo is more than a sport, it's a life -a quest that takes them from Invercargill to Kaitaia in pursuit of that magical eight-second ballet between man and beast
"It's been a hectic week," sighed George Gibbs when I met him in his lair at Wellington's Victoria University. He had been helping Japanese and French television crews who were in the country filming weta and other curiosities in our fauna. "Weta have been ignored for so long; now they're becoming flavour of the month." Not that George is complaining. That our most distinctive insects are shaking off obscurity on the one hand and their negative public image on the other can only be a good thing. But the most extraordinary aspect—the one that excites biologists like George—is the fact that there are still undiscovered species of weta out there. "It's amazing to think that you can get in a chopper on the West Coast, fly to a mountain top and nine hours later come back with a new species." For the Victoria University Reader in Zoology,that is incentive enough to trudge through dripping beech forest or scale granite bluffs, anticipating that epiphanous moment when sleuth comes face to face with quarry. George is first and foremost a lepidopterist, and has published a book on New Zealand butterflies. Weta are a more recent interest—and a pressing one, in light of the endangered status of many species. Obtaining funding to save threatened insect populations is not easy, says George. "Vertebrates, especially birds, capture the public imagination—and the funds. Yet in global terms most of the biodiversity on the planet is invertebrate. Our battle is to get a hearing for the creatures that get overlooked—insects and snails and so on. Giant weta act as flagships in this fight." We hope the article in this issue helps their cause.
Terror overwhelmed the people of Christchurch as the city's classiest department store erupted in a fearsome inferno, claiming 41 lives.
Popularly regarded as brainless kamikazes lacking all road sense, pukeko are confounding scientists with their complex, flexible social lives. And, while other native birds struggle to survive environmental changes, pukeko seem to take everything in their strutting stride.
Tested to the limit by poverty and tribulation, the Bohemians who settled in Puhoi last century clung to two guiding principles: be faithful to the Church and always help your neighbour. Hard work, too, created strong bonds within the community. Today, although bullock teams like John Rauner's have made way for tractors and four-wheel-drives, the traditions of the pioneers live on. An early morning worshipper finds solace at the altar of the village church, built by his ancestors.
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