Latest posts by Martin Moodie (see all)
- Finding a very New Zealand fault on the wondrous West Coast - March 16, 2025
- Back in New Zealand, Aotearoa, land of the long white cloud - March 11, 2025
- In celebration of The Moodie Davitt Report wāhine - March 8, 2025
I’m in Inchbonnie, a quiet and beautiful spot in the West Coast region of New Zealand’s South Island. It sounds Scottish and indeed its origins are. Inchbonnie is derived from Lowland Scots, bonnie meaning ‘pretty’ and inch an abbreviation for the Scottish gaelic word ‘Innis’ (island). And I can tell you that every inch of this place is very bonnie indeed.
But also a volatile one. Inchbonnie is located slap bang on the Alpine Fault, a giant geological fracture that runs along the South Island and whose seismic activity has seen the majestic Southern Alps uplifted over the past 12 million years.
Without getting too technical, the Alpine Fault runs along the line where two tectonic plates under the South Island meet (see image below), one moving west, the other east.
The enormous pressure built up by those two plates rubbing against one another means, eventually, something has to give. The last time it did on any scale was 1717 and it was a whopper, over Moment Magnitude 8 .
It’s hard to believe while soaking in the beauty and tranquility of this place but there is a 75% probability of another big – and I mean really big – Alpine Fault earthquake within the next 50 years, a mere blink of an eye in geological terms.
For now though, all is calm in this beguiling place, one largely undiscovered by international tourists. And even here, far away from the madding crowd during a two-day retreat without internet (and only sporadic phone signal), I have found a link to the aviation sector that has dominated my life since I left New Zealand in what seems another lifetime, way back in 1987.
For it was here 90+ years ago on 18 December 1934 that Captain Bert Mercer pioneered the country’s first licensed scheduled air service, picking up passengers at the newly created Inchbonnie Airfield and flying them on a Havilland DH83 Fox Moth ZK-AD to Hokitika and Franz Josef over the mountains, valleys and glaciers.
What a day out that must have been for the passengers who had arrived on the West Coast by train from Christchurch.
The 90th anniversary of that historic flight was celebrated on 18 December last year with a series of festivities including a fly past of the very same de Havilland DH83 Fox Moth ZK-ADI. The bronze plaque and explanatory panel pictured below tells the fascinating story of this landmark day in Kiwi and Pacific aviation.
It’s a stirring tale, one of many in an aviation industry built on pioneering spirit and courage to create a transport sector most people now take for granted. Reminders such as this ensure I am not one of them. ✈
SCENES FROM A SOUTH ISLAND ROAD TRIP
