Well I have been pretty quiet for the past week and that will be the pattern from here on in with occasional updates as time permits. Although in this case a lot of that is because of changing computers around as well. It was decided to get more use out of the secondary PC seeing as it is actually the newer and faster one, so I am still partway through the job of having given it the three head video card and third screen, and the extra memory (currently it has 16 GB and the older computer has 12, but this is because of the older computer’s memory not working in the newer computer, so I intend to add another 8 GB to this newer computer when the opportunity permits, to ensure it has plenty of memory). Rearranging all the files etc is still in the process of happening due to the amount of work involved.

I have been working on maps of the Dunedin area and these will soon go into the Otago-Southland maps project so that they can be published as the earlier MSL series did. At the moment I am working on Merton, Seacliff, Waitati, Sawyers Bay, Port Chalmers, Ravensbourne and Dunedin. 

Here is a photo from Google Earth in Waikouaiti.

Just north of the township you have what looks like and in fact is an abandoned piece of highway complete with the centre line marked in and here you can see the closed level crossing. In the background you have the current highway that was once linked into this other old highway via this level crossing. 

The other end of that old highway is a bit further north here at Tumai.

Here we have Bridge 197, the old Tumai Overbridge over the MSL and in the background the new section of highway that bypasses this twisty section over that narrow bridge and also eliminates the level crossing shown in the previous picture. The main issues were in fact at that overbridge with its narrowness plus the two sharp curves on its approaches, and at the level crossing.

The highway realignment involved 3.5 km of new highway and cost $7 million to build. It was opened by Minister of Transport Annette King in September 2007. Projects like this rarely happen in the South Island these days as National has focused on sucking as much money as possible into the RONs.