Galatea Bluff Survey Was Tough Proposition: Engineer Looks Back

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 2, 28 November 1947, Page 4

Galatea Bluff Survey Was Tough Proposition: Engineer Looks Back

Though this was an age of specialisation, the local body engineer must be prepared to tackle any branch of his profession and any type of engineering problem, in which his job resembled that of a medical general practitioner, said Mr C. H. Brebner, County engineer, in an address to Whakatane Rotarians on Wednesday. Going over his own experience, Mr Brebner said he considered the most difficult job he had ever tackled was the Galatea Bluff survey. The job required a knowledge of mountainering, did not conform to text-book conditions and even required the improving of some of the instruments for measuring cross sections.

In some places the men worked on sheer rock faces rising up to 300 feet from the river. One experienced steeplejack tossed the job in after two hours. He said he was going back where there was something to hang on to.

/ Most of the team felt the nerve strain and had some nasty nightmares at times.

Earlier in his address, Mr Brebner traced the development of the engineering Institutes of Britain and New Zealand from January 1818, when the British Institute of Civil Engineers' was formed by Thomas Telford and others, to the present day. Vice-president H. Dainton moved the vote of thanks.