Brent Irving and Craig Bates shared with the club an Update on the Taieri Cycle Projects

The main points to developing and expanding the Rail Trails or cycle tracks within the Taieri area are:

1.   A safe, user friendly cycle & walking trail between Dunedin, Mosgiel/Taieri & all the suburbs in between

2.  A flat commuting track linking up the South & creating Dunedin’s southern gateway to Otago trails including coastal

3.   Ticks social goals: reducing vehicles, less carbon, congestion in the city

4.   Re-open and highlight Dunedin’s heritage assets

It will amazing when the trails are all open and operating across the plains, linking through to central and down to Waihola.

This years book sale proceeds are going to assist in developing these trails,

Just  a few words from Graham as he and Trish travel through the top end of Australia.....

Our trip goes very well and just about everything has gone to plan.  5220 Ks covered.  And a few to go.  Currently in Denham on the coast. (over 800ks north of Perth)
WA is huge and it seems everything here has a similar flavour.

Lake Argyle is vast. NW corner fo WA. It is claimed that if they lifted the 300m long dam out, it would take 2-3 years to drain it.
We visited the Tom Price Mine.  Huge.  Rio Tinto servicemen have over 700 ks of conveyor belts to maintain, the longest almost 40 ks.  (80 ks of belt!)
The roads we have driven on are (mostly) divine!  
The sunsets are amazing.
80 Mile Beach is in fact 137 miles long!
The iron ore trains are well over 2 k’s long.
We dont argue with road trains—53.5 meters long and as heavy as——carrying up to 155 tonnes of ore. 

Tell everyone to start planning their trips for next winter—you will NOT be disappointed.

A WA sunset—they happen everyday over here(!)—and are particularly red and colourful in the winter—or that’s when we have seen so many of them.

Lake Argyle

Zebra rock ( in hand) striped rock thought to have been formed 5-600 million yards ago in molten rock and which formed these amazing types of patterns.  Only found in 2 or 3 secret places, one of which is sunken well below Lake Argyle.  cf a lava-lamp effect.

A Fogbow—a rare atmospheric phenomenon which we were very lucky to experience

Rocky outlines at Barn Hill Station, about 120 k’s south of Broome