[zkarj]

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Sleeping in the top bunk in a hut at 1300metres and perched above a 200metre precipice and with Murchison in the valley in the background is perhaps not the ideal spot for an earthquake, but actually it wasn't too bad – I think Wanganui felt it worse.
Ghost lake hut on the Old Ghost Road from Lyall to Seddonville.

I spent a bit of time in and around Murchison when I was a kid – Christmas hols. At my aunt & uncle's farm in Mangles Valley in the early years, later in the township. But Dad's side of the family have a lot of history in the Nelson-Murchison area. With several family members keen on genealogy, quite a few stories have been recorded. Below are some excerpts that came from an ancestor I am not familiar with. I read this story every so often and wonder at the fortitude of our forebears.

The morning of 17 June 1929, was a typical winter’s morning in the surrounding areas and valleys in the Murchison District. We lived thirty-six miles away from the Murchison township, but evidently right on a fault line.

...

About six that morning we had had a couple of small quakes, and the topic of conversation was earthquakes. Someone said they had been predicted, and one young chap, Derek Smith, said; “I’m off back to England!” He had no sooner said it, and “BANG” it came.

Everyone seemed to disappear. The rattling and banging was terrible, bricks crashing through the roof, the house was shaken off its piles. I stood under the doorway for a while. I was so frightened I took off and went up the back, why I don’t know. The sheep, and rocks were rolling off the hill. I could hear my mother calling me. I tried to walk back, but I had to crawl. It was waving just like the sea. Where I had been standing had all slipped down into the gully. My father was away up the road somewhere, as the Harleys Rock bridge was being built. A swing bridge was there. Olive, my sister, was two years old, and of course she couldn’t understand what was going on. It started to quieten down, so I sat in the wheel-barrow and cuddled Olive. Every few minutes it would shake again. Fred, Stan and Veda were all at school. We thought they would be safe, but we were not so sure over Dad. We were very relieved when we saw them coming down the road. Dad carried Veda over the slips.

It was a very long night, no telephones, no radio and hard to get any outside news. My sister, May, was right in Murchison, staying with some friends. We were worried about her, but they got word to us somehow that she was taken to Nelson when they were able to get out. After two or three nights, our Aunty at Spear-grass sent word to say they had no damage. So we walked as far as we could, and they picked us up with horse and dray. We stayed with them for about six weeks while Dad had the chimney re-built and fixed up the roof, and jacked the house back on its piles and generally repaired all the bits and pieces.

...

The quakes never really let up for about a year. You would hear a rumble, and you would wait for it to shake, and then you would carry on - a way of life. I think the thunder and lightning, and heavy rain like cloudbursts were more frightening. It must have been very hard times, as there wasn’t much assistance in those days, you had to foot the bill yourself, and several big after-shocks did quite a bit of damage, especially with ground slipping away.

...

[GUB]

Lyall. How are the sandflies? All 75 million of them?

---------- Post added 11-20-16 at 10:37 AM ----------

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Yeah - bad at Lyall and far worse at Mohikinui forks hut - fortunately we didn't have to stay at either place. But overall they were not too bad.

[GUB]

I spent a bit of time in and around Murchison when I was a kid – Christmas hols. At my aunt & uncle's farm in Mangles Valley in the early years, later in the township. But Dad's side of the family have a lot of history in the Nelson-Murchison area. With several family members keen on genealogy, quite a few stories have been recorded. Below are some excerpts that came from an ancestor I am not familiar with. I read this story every so often and wonder at the fortitude of our forebears.

Yes part of our walk was over collapsed ground from the big one - a whole valley was dumped on.

[zkarj]

I found a nifty piece of Mac software for $15 that does a rather wonderful thing with photos – it "recreates" them with primitive shapes. It can use rectangles, ellipses, triangles or bezier curves. It's called Primitive.

The user provides an image as input. The program tries to find the most optimal shape that can be drawn to maximize the similarity between the target image and the drawn image. It repeats this process, adding one shape at a time.

Using this process, the program can recreate a photo with surprisingly few shapes.

There are elements of randomness and inexactness in it which means no two generation runs produce the same result. It's actually quite fascinating to watch. If you know ahead of time what the picture us, it usually only takes 50 shapes or so to start becoming recognisable.

Here are a couple of examples I've generated.

RNZAF Tiger Moth NZ662 recreated with 3,000 bezier curves. (Original here.) It seems to take quite a lot of lines before details show well, such as the undercarriage, struts and roundels in this image. The basic shape was very well defined after only 1,000 curves but lacked these details.


Ruapehu reflected in lake recreated with 600 triangles. (Original here.) With solid shapes the details tend to be inferred by colour long before they resolve clearly, so a lot fewer shapes can be used. I generally find < 400 is still somewhat abstract whereas 400-600 or so has a pleasing look as below, and more bring in much more detail.

[NZ_Ross]

I found a nifty piece of Mac software for $15 that does a rather wonderful thing with photos – it "recreates" them with primitive shapes. It can use rectangles, ellipses, triangles or bezier curves. It's called Primitive.

That is very cool

[MarkJerling]

Neat! That Ruapehu image would make a rather nice canvas.

[Kiwizinho]

Sleeping in the top bunk in a hut at 1300metres and perched above a 200metre precipice and with Murchison in the valley in the background is perhaps not the ideal spot for an earthquake, but actually it wasn't too bad – I think Wanganui felt it worse.
Ghost lake hut on the Old Ghost Road from Lyall to Seddonville.

I wonder whether the Murchison earthquake years ago had anything to do with that precipice being there?

---------- Post added 11-21-16 at 08:58 AM ----------

Neat! That Ruapehu image would make a rather nice canvas.

It looks like even cubism has been taken over by computers now. Human artists are redundant.

[Arpe]

That is very cool

I concur. The Ruapehu in particular.

[GUB]

I wonder whether the Murchison earthquake years ago had anything to do with that precipice being there?

Na - the Murchison collapse areas are still quite raw. Here is a couple of shots of one called the Boneyard - one looking up and the other down. You can see how the debris blasted on down creek ripping off the far side. You can't make it out but the track zigzags up the middle of the up picture then off to the left. That is where the down picture was taken from. 5 x 28mm stitches editted quickly.

[MarkJerling]

Odd, these two trampers that just died in pretty good conditions near Waiohine Gorge.

[GUB]

Odd, these two trampers that just died in pretty good conditions near Waiohine Gorge.

Thinking there might be a bit more to the story - Not that challenging a track.

[richandfleur]

Love those tramping pics GUB

---------- Post added 11-23-16 at 12:53 PM ----------

That is very cool

Sure is. Really impressed with the results of the primitive shape tool.

[zkarj]

Really impressed with the results of the primitive shape tool.

They've just released an update which adds a "draw mode" that allows you to guide the shape generation with the mouse – basically telling it roughly where to draw the random shapes. Great for improving details in key areas.

Here I let the basic algorithm generate only 100 ellipses, which you can see from the obvious shapes on the sky and ground, and then "drew in" another 216 to get detail in the subject.

[MarkJerling]

That's cool. I still like the cubism one best!

[Transit]

They've just released an update which adds a "draw mode" that allows you to guide the shape generation with the mouse – basically telling it roughly where to draw the random shapes. Great for improving details in key areas.

Here I let the basic algorithm generate only 100 ellipses, which you can see from the obvious shapes on the sky and ground, and then "drew in" another 216 to get detail in the subject.

far out. If I squint really hard I can see the pilots whiskers
amazing thing human ability to fill in the dots

---------- Post added 24th Nov 2016 at 01:15 PM ----------

Sleeping in the top bunk in a hut at 1300metres and perched above a 200metre precipice and with Murchison in the valley in the background is perhaps not the ideal spot for an earthquake, but actually it wasn't too bad – I think Wanganui felt it worse.
Ghost lake hut on the Old Ghost Road from Lyall to Seddonville.

good lord, great shot !