LAND SURVEY MAPS

Timaru Herald, Volume CLV, Issue 22789, 13 January 1944, Page 5

LAND SURVEY MAPS

Removal From Safe

Storage

After having been in cool storage for more than 18 months to ensure their safety in the event of the bombing of Auckland, the original maps and plans of the Auckland and South Auckland survey districts are now' in process of being returned to the Government Building at the corner of Albert Street and Customs Street West. It is one of the signs of the times, indicating confidence in the Allied winning trend of the war in the Pacific and the permanent removal of the threat to New Zealand. Five months after Pearl Harbour, when the threat of raid, if not of actual invasion, of the Dominion, was at its height, the dispersal of these invaluable documents on which the whole land title system of the Auckland area was based, was undertaken. It was realised that the ■Ltd Government Building was structurally unfitted to withstand the blast of bombing, and a temporary home for the most valuable of the survey records was sought in the Internal Marketing Department’s modern building, with its facilities for safe storage and capable of resisting bomb blast. This dispersal of the documents took place in May, 1942, since when the lands and survey staff and the public have had to put up with a deal of inconvenience arising out of the difficulty of getting necessary information contained in the original records. But until recently the safety factor was the Department’s dominant concern, for loss of the documents and the data they contained would have involved incalculable land complexities. These maps and plans related to property from the North Cape to Taumarunui, and from coast to coast down to Whakatane. Looking forward to the possibility of the Government Building escaping damage in the event of a raid, the containers of the documents were carefully numbered at the time of removal, rack by rack and drawer by drawer. As a consequence, the work of their replacement in their original home is going along easily and smoothly. It is expected that they will all be back in their places by the end of this week, and once again will be open for inspection by departmental and private surveyors, to whom they are of special interest and importance.