Field Trips For From Canterbury Museum

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28447, 29 November 1957, Page 12

Field Trips For From Canterbury Museum

The Canterbury Museum will participate in three field trips during January. The museum’s third expedition to Fiordland will begin when the members leave Christchurch on January 9. They will travel to Lake Manapouri and then to Deep Cove, Doubtful Sound.

From there, a launch will take the party to a point on Thompson Sound, opposite Secretary Island. A base camp will be set up some distance inland and from it one group will carry out its work. Two other groups will explore the rest of the area. The party will return to Manapouri on January 26. The previous expeditions, in 1953 • and 1955, made the first topographical and scientific exploration of Fiordland between the south fiord of Lake Te Anau and the heads of Nancy Sound and Bradshaw Sound. This portion of Fiordland extends from the western edge of the restricted area of Takahe Valley to the sea, and lies partly within the Murchison Mountains.

The 1958 expedition proposes to ex-tend the investigation to the peninsula lying between Nancy Sound to the north and Thompson and Bradshaw Sounds to the south, thus covering the only still unexplored portion of the area. The area is about 70 square miles of mountain and bush. Mr T. R. Hitchings Leader

The expedition will be led by Mr T. R. Hitchings. The scientific leader and zoologist will be Mr E. G. Turbott, the assistant director of the museum, who will carry out a bird census, o‘her bird observations and zoological collecting. Mr W. Dukes, of the museum staff, will take topographical and colour-photographs and collect otifers. A plant study of the area will be made by Mr L. Metcalf, a botanist, of the Botanic Gardens. A 16mm movie film of the expedition will be made by Mr R. Evans. The film will be available to the museum for showing and Mr Evans has agreed to allow copies to be made if the museum wants a permanent record. The party has secured the assistance of Mr A. M. Cookson, who has made several explorations in nearby Fiordland areas in recent years. He has assisted in the preliminary .planning of the expedition and he will also assist in mapping the area. Dr. C. A. Wiggins will act as medical adviser to the party. Dr. R. R. Forster Dr. R. R. Forster, director of the Otago Museum, and formerly of the Canterbury Museum, has been invited to join the expedition. It is expected that his presence will greatly extend the value of the scientific work, as well as providing for co-operation with the Otago Museum. The expedition will undertake three special projects, the first of which will be to make a general collection of plants. The second project will be to make a general collection of invertebrates, with special attention to spiders and harvestmen, on which Dr Forster is an authority. All members of the party will take part in the third project—trying to find signs of takahe (notornis) and kakapo. The previous expeditions fround evidence of takahe 20 miles west of the original area of rediscovery and within 10 miles of the area to be explored. A record of kakapo obtained in 1955 was one of the few recent reports of a now very rare bird. At a meeting of the Canterbury Museum Trust Board yesterday, it was decided to pay £36 towards the cost of chartering an amphibious aircraft to fly the bulk of the expedition’s stores from Te Anau to Deep Cove and of the launch charter from Deep Cove to Thompson Sound and return. The board also decided to pay the museum staff members’ share of the food cost. Redcliffs Cave The Moa-bone Point Ca\p at Redcliffs, which was first excavated by an amateur archaelogist Mr Selwyn Hovell, earlier this year, will be further excavated The New Zealand Archaeological Association has adopted the cave as its official project and eight archaeologists from other centres will take part in the excavation. Work would begin early in January, when it was hoped that local volunteers would assist in the “pick and shovel work.” said the director (Dr. Roger Duff) at a meeting of the board yesterday. The City Council might be asked for help in removing an “enormous” boulder from the cave, said Dr. Duff. The visiting archaeologists would begin work in the cave on January 8 and possibly continue until the end of the month. | Among the visiting archaeolog-

ists will be Messrs J. Golson, of Auckland University College, A. L. , Locherbie, of the Otago Museum, J. R. Eyles, of Wairau Bar. J. Bruce-Palmer, of the Polynesian Society, G. L. Adkin, of the New Zealand Geological Survey, and Miss Susan Davis, of the Dominion Museum. Waitaki Gorge

The third field trip will be to the Waitaki Gorge. This trip is being made at the request of the secretary of the National Historic Places Trust (Mr John Pascoe). A small party from Wellington will make drawings and take photographs of Maori rock drawings which will disappear below the surface of the dam when the Benmore hydro-electric scheme is completed. Dr. Duff will accompany the party.