24-Feb-2018 -- The northeastern coast of New Zealand’s South Island has undergone significant changes in recent years. One man-made change is that many former sheep and dairy farms have been converted to more profitable wineries (growing primarily white-wine varieties). This Degree Confluence Point is an example of this. Sometime between July 2005 and March 2009 (visits 2 and 3) this point was converted from a sheep or dairy farm to a vineyard (“Sleeper Vineyard”).

Other changes have been caused by Mother Nature. In November 2016, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the area. During the quake, the Kekerengu Fault - which passes very near the point - shifted up to 10 meters! This means that the ‘all zeros’ photo that was captured during the previous visit (in August 2010) might not occur at the same point now.

A more practical consequence of the earthquake was that State Highway 1 - the main coast road in this area - was closed for more than a year. It reopened two months ago, but then closed again a few days ago due to another Act of Nature: the remnants of passing Tropical Cyclone Gita, which caused torrential rainfall, closing the road once again. Because of this, I could not reach this point by driving north from Christchurch (my original plan), but instead was forced to approach it from the north, from Blenheim.

I turned off State Highway 1 onto Kekerengu Road, about 1 km from the point. This road passes about 100 m from the point. The point itself lies within the vineyard, between two of the several rows of immaculately-planted grapevines, running roughly south-to-north.