Oil from Orepuki for a while
Southland’s first oil works extracted oil from shale at Orepuki from 1899 to 1902, with 12,000 tons of shale being processed in 1901.
The discovery of the oil has been attributed to a miner who made a hearthstone of shale, only to find it ablaze.
In 1930, there was a proposal to re-open the works.
‘‘It has been noted with pleasure that definite steps are being taken towards reopening of the Orepuki Shale Works. More than 25 years ago, a syndicate established a plant at Orepuki costing in the vicinity of £125,000 but unfortunately the enterprise was not successful.
‘‘Now advice has been received that the matter has been taken up again by a body of businessmen and, with the modern plant that can now be installed with the purpose of converting shale into marketable products, there is every possibility of the works being reopened and run profitably.
‘‘Vast sums are spent in New Zealand on imported oil and if even a proportion of this money was devoted to the purchase of New Zealand products, it would be greatly to the advantage of everybody.
‘‘The establishment of such an industry in Southland will be welcomed. In the event, the shale works, Southland’s first venture into oil production, was never reopened.
‘‘There is little left today of what was a major industry. A slag heap grassed over and a brick shed mark the site of a profitable industry, doomed by cheap imports.’’
It was rumoured that an American company had bought out the Orepuki Works, known as Southern Cross Oil, and closed them down.
Missing professor
Southland’s first large-scale search for a missing person was a series of expeditions trying to ascertain the fate of Professor Mainwaring Brown, a professor on English Literature from Otago university.
On December 6, 1888, Brown, who was a member of an expedition exploring the region between Lake Manapouri and Deep Cove, disappeared.
‘‘About noon, Professor Brown left the camp for a stroll to the gorge but, with rain coming on, the party became anxious and searched for him until evening but without success. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were terrible days, with rain, hail, and wind.’’
Brown’s disappearance remains a mystery and the names Disaster Burn and Lake Mainwaring commemorate the tragedy.
Confluencing
Confluencing is a challenge related to Geocaching. ‘‘Confluencers’’ locate the point at which latitude and longitude intersect as whole numbers.
There are 9,885 of these on Earth including 32 in New Zealand. Points are only counted if they are on land and towards the poles they are thinned out otherwise they would be too close – only 1.95km apart at one degree north of the South Pole. At the Equator one degree of latitude = 110.57 km and one degree of longitude = 111.32 km. They don’t quite match up because the Earth isn’t perfectly spherical. Incidentally, one minute of longitude (a sixtieth of a degree) at the equator = 1.86 km, 1.15 miles or exactly one nautical mile. This is the origin of the nautical mile and a speed of one nautical mile per hour is one knot.
Only one of New Zealand’s confluence points hasn’t been visited and you could call it Southland’s remotest spot. 46 degreesS 167 degrees E is deep in the Cameron Mountains in southwest Fiordland, 36 km from Port Craig and at an altitude of 548m. There are four other confluence points in Southland – at Chatton, Wairio, Big Glory Bay and on the Milford road.
45 degrees S 168 degrees E is only 800m west of the Milford Rd. A sign on the road shows 45 degrees south and with your GPS you head west, cross the Eglinton River and push through the beech forest until you find the spot beside a tall Red beech.
Some 6462 of the world’s points have been located so there is plenty of scope for ticking off new ones. A warning though – the easy ones were done first, including the one in a supermarket in Canada – and it’s only the gnarly stuff left. We’re talking about remote mountain tops, dismal swamps, jungle, dangerous reefs, terrible deserts and unfriendly locals.