NEPAL AND N.Z. MOUNTAINS

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 28001, 22 June 1956, Page 12

NEPAL AND N.Z. MOUNTAINS

GEOGRAPHER COMPARES CHARACTERISTICS

The geography of Nepal and that of the high country of New Zealand were compared by Mr W. P. Packard, lecturer in geography at Canterbury University College, in an address, “A Geographer Looks at Mountains,” to the Canterbury Mountaineering Club last evening. Mr Packard was a member of the British expedition to the Himalayas in 1950, and he has also had wids climbing experience in New Zealand.

Mr Packard said Nepal and the New Zealand high country were physically similar, but the Himalayas had to be thought of as three times bigger than the mountains of New Zealand. s

Because of that there were much greater differences with height in the Himalayas, he said. Tropical conditions prevailed at the foot, and almost polar conditions at the top. In New Zealand, there were only temperate conditions at the foot and polar conditions at the top. Nepal could get much more varied use of the land, with different crops growing at different altitudes on the same mountainside, said Mr Packard. In New Zealand, there was only one culture group, whereas in Nepal there were two major culture groups, with a number of variations where they overlapped.

The New Zealand mountains were relatively unoccupied and very extensively used for producing little, but land in the Himalayas was used very intensively to produce a lot from small areas of land, Mr Packard said.