Suburban heights survey reveals some surprises

WE’VE got a few odds and ends to mop up today ahead of our ‘‘grand final’’ (have you noticed how finals are always ‘‘grand’’ these days?) instalment tomorrow.

I hope you enjoy the rather bizarre ‘‘look alike’’ photos running today. I’ve had them tucked away in my WWT ‘‘bottom drawer’’ for several months, just in case I ever ran out of images. I thought they were too good to spike.

The highest bit

Thanks to those of you who took a punt on the highest residential street in central Dunedin and also the highest house in that street.

I can now reveal all. And it’s not Halfway Bush. Drum roll please.

The Dunedin City Council’s chief information officer, Tracey Tamakehu , explains:

‘‘We have done an analysis of the heights of suburban Dunedin streets above mean sea level, with ‘suburban’ defined as being within the urban residential planning zone.

‘‘The highest suburban street in the Dunedin City Council area is Eton St, in Hyde, which is up to 379m above mean sea level.

‘‘In ‘central’ Dunedin, Grigor St, in Brockville, is the highest suburban street, reaching up to 304m above mean sea level.

Parts of nearby Dalziel Rd reach higher, but the highest point of Dalziel Rd with residential properties on it is 303m.’’

A quick look at a topographic map shows the lucky people at 3 Grigor St are the most elevated in suburban central Dunedin, at just over 304m up. They must be the first ones to get the snow.

A pat on the back to anyone who guessed that correctly.

That persistent exhibition . . .

Well, this has been one discussion that has not gone away. I’m talking, of course, about the 192526 New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition held on Logan Park, reclaimed from its predecessor, Lake Logan.

Bill McDonald writes about a band photograph we published a month or so ago

‘‘I think you will find that this is the regimental military band of the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders which was featured at the 1925 Exhibition. It is not a pipe band but it did have with it four pipers.

‘‘Basically, a military band is brass with the addition of woodwinds and some other instruments. The Argyles would also have had a pipe band, but that would have still been with the regiment wherever it was based at that time, and they would be referred to as the ‘pipes and drums’ of the regiment not the ‘pipe band’.

‘‘I also think copies of that photo may have been given to pipe and brass bands around Otago. There was one in the former band hall of the Milton Pipe Band but where that is now I have no idea, as the band no longer exists and a lot of stuff like that may have been disposed of.’’

John White, of Belleknowes, has seen a curious photo of the exhibition, taken from what is now the Caledonian Ground.

‘‘It shows a slide or shute coming down from Palmers Quarry to the ground. One copy of the photo is in the Civic Centre in Dunedin.

‘‘I am intrigued as to whether this object is an amusement slide or was used to get rock for the formation of the exhibition area.’’

Gobbledegook

To finish off today, just a few classic bits of balderdash saved by one of our subeditors.

1. ‘‘It is dovetailing with what is required on the coalface.’’

2. ‘‘Wayfinding signage.’’

3. ‘‘If we clip it on to the front end of the process we can reduce the contention at the back end.’’

. . . which bears more than a passing resemblance to this skeleton of a diplodocus in the foyer of the Natural History Museum in London . . .

PHOTOS: ANDREW ASHTON, DARRYL YOUNG, PAM JONES, WIKIPEDIA . . . which could be the cousin of the famous, prehistoric 110mlong Uffington White Horse, carved into a chalk hillside on the Berkshire Downs in the late Bronze Age, sometime between 1380BC and 550BC.

. . . this stick insect found by Darryl Young on a path in Dunedin . . .

Why reinvent the wheel and come up with a new design? This irrigator on the Waitaki River plains looks like . . .