Waiparau Head marks eastern edge

ABOUT THE SOUTH

Did you know. . . Southland’s easternmost point is Waiparau Head south of Chaslands Mistake in the Catlins. It is the headland between Southland’s Long Beach and Otago’s Wallace Beach. The Southland coastline extends 3000km from there to Awarua Point on the West Coast. Waiparau means Slave Stream. Picture shows Waiparau Head from Long Beach.

The observatory attached to the museum was opened on June 1, 1972. It had two functions. The first was to provide Southlanders with a facility for observing the night sky, and the second was to give a permanent home to the Moonwatch Satellite Tracking Station where volunteers reported the movement of satellites. Southland Astronomical Society records say, ‘‘Moonwatch began in 1966 and when it ended the Smithsonian told its observers to stop observing. One night, Geoff HallJones was due to track the PAGEOS satellite, but instead of tracking one satellite he followed a whole string of them. The satellite had broken up. According to Mr Hall-Jones, when the Smithsonian sent out the word to stop observing, they assumed that everyone did stop. The American military also assumed that nobody was looking and proceeded (though this was never confirmed) to take pot-shots at old satellites with missiles. The reason PAGEOS was all strung out was that (supposedly) it had been used for target practice, something nobody would have known about but for Mr HallJones’ dedication to his satellite tracking.’’

The first Invercargill building was a hut built by Harry McCoy about 1853 in the vicinity of what was later the intersection of Tay and Dee streets. McCoy ran cattle on the future site of Invercargill before the town was surveyed in 1856.

Southland’s largest freshwater fish is the female long-finned eel which can reach two metres and weigh 25kg.

A radio telephone message sent by the government observer on the Sir James Clark Ross, the Ross Sea Whaling Company’s factory ship, was the first occasion upon which the radiotelephone has been used to send an official wireless communication to a New Zealand coast station. Awarua Radio picked up the message sent by Captain George Hooper from 1400 miles distance on March 14, 1924.