Above a test of a steel frame brick clad domestic structure on behalf of the National Association of Steel Framed Housing of New Zealand (NASH) at Melbourne University.
New Zealand has an awful lot going for it. It’s land area is 103,483 square miles (Sorry, 268,021 km2 Derek) and the population just over 4 million. New Zealand is an advanced western democracy with a government using a modified “Westminster model” and has HM the Queen as it’s head of state – who is represented by a Governor-General. It has beautiful scenery and is inhabited by Kiwis!
Unlike Australia the climate is less extreme and on South Island a lot like the UK. Also New Zealand does not have any indigenous land snakes, but it is visited on occasion by the yellow-bellied sea snake (Pelamis platurus) and the banded sea krait (Laticauda colubrina). These snakes live in salt water and swim long distances to the shores of New Zealand from place, like the islands of the South Pacific, New Guinea, Australia and Southeast Asia. Although small, both are poisonous, and potentially hazardous to local fauna and humans alike. With 35 confirmed sightings since 1930, there is a better chance of seeing a sea snake than a land snake (that from time to time have inadvertently been imported by cargo ship or deliberately imported by lunatics.
New Zealand however does have something Dear Old Blighty does not have. Earthquakes. However human ingenuity is always at work and the above video shows that it is perfectly feasible to construct a dwelling to survive a severe earthquake up to 9.0 on the Richter scale!
See: http://nashnz.org.nz/
Why has the British Gazette produced this article?
Because the way the UK is going many may wish to emigrate!
Speaking the Truth unto the Nation
