Pre and Post Congress Field Trips

Pre and Post Congress field trips will be held over periods of 3 to 5 days with options offered in both New Zealand and Australia. Delegates are encouraged to use these trips as a starting point for a longer stay in Australasia. Opportunities may include:

New Zealand

Taupo Volcanic Zone
and Tongariro National Park

Taupo is an active, large, lake–filled rhyolite caldera. The area supports geothermal- and hydro- power schemes. Engineering geological sites of interest include urban geothermal subsidence, geothermal energy production, collapsing andesite cones, tunnels and dams in an active volcanic rift. Visit White Island, an offshore, unstable, active, andesitic cone, a geothermal field cut by a massive normal active fault, with landslides and eruption craters. Run down into the craters of Mt Tarawera and examine this fragile landscape up close. Walk to the snowline on Tongariro volcano and consider lahar hazard control and mitigation and ski field geo-hazard management. Take a short walk in primeval forests and feast on rainbow trout or venison.

Time out for a Maori cultural show, a hangi and a swim in a geothermally heated spa. Take in the narrow ignimbrite gorges by white water rafting or jet boating.


Auckland to Lake Waikaremoana

Visit the Golden Cross gold Mine amongst spectacular landslide topography. Key issues include subsidence of urban areas, risk management and restoration. Visit the Karangahake and Waitewheta gorges nearby and walk through the Woodstock windows tunnel. Down the road a little is the Martha mine at Waihi and beyond, travel to the Matata debris flow landslides that occurred in response to heavy rainfall in Spring of 2006. Travel south through Murupara and on to Waikaremoana and the lake Tutira and Tiniroto landslides. Optional 3-day remote walk around the landslide lake, Lake Waikaremoana.

Nelson – Westland

Fly down the plate boundary to Nelson and see the Australian continental fragment we tore away from our Neighbours. Urban landslides, active fault scarps. Deep granite gorges, Magnitude 7 to 7.8 historic earthquakes and landslides and coalmines. Either continue by SH73 to Christchurch or down the West Coast to Haast and the great southern lakes carved out by glaciers and dammed by moraine, at Wanaka and Queenstown.

Christchurch and the Southern Alps

Highways through the Alps, viaducts and rock slide avalanches, the Alpine Fault plate boundary, active tectonics, modern schist debris avalanches, extreme erosion and downstream land inundation, tectonic and alpine geomorphology, with southern pinot noir vineyards to follow up, all close to New Zealand’s Garden City. Visit Akaroa – a town founded by French settlers in the 19th Century, with cottages, streets and shops bearing French names.

 

 

  

 



Marlborough, Kaikoura and Hamner Basin

Traverse the accretionary wedge, piled on-board the Marlborough Shear belt. Huge topples, rock slides, debris avalanches and a host of limestones and shales in complex arrays, thrusts and decollements. An active pull-apart basin surrounded by faults is the location of natural thermal hot springs. Mountains rising 2700 m out of the sea, with a coastal highway at their feet. See the whales in their environment at Kaikoura, enjoy lobster and seafood, visit famous sauvignon blanc vineyards – experience the “Marlborough Factor”.


Otago

Schist landslides, large dams, highways, urban and rural development, alpine tourism facilities. Home of the “bungy jump” and an acclaimed pinot noir industry. Scenic flights over Fiordland or longer sea cruises into the fiords. Fly into Milford sound on a glorious clear early Spring day. 

Australia

Cairns

Based in Cairns, you will have access to the Great Barrier reef and the opportunity to try snorkelling or diving in warm waters, explore the lava tunnels of the hinterland and examine urban landslide hazards.


Melbourne

Visit the Great Ocean Road and consider the technical and non-technical landslide management strategies employed, visit the Victorian lava fields and cones, and the dams and hydro-schemes of the Snowy Mountains, while being based in one of Australia’s premier cultural centres.