From the 17th-24th I’ll be on a field trip in Kekerengu as a demonstrator – making an impression on the geologists who make up this year’s third years and hopefully carrying out diabolical plans to corrupt them in strange and painful new ways.

“Kek” is, frankly, one of the most structurally fucked up places in New Zealand. Tectonically, it’s the point where the Australian plate stops being subducted by the Pacific plate, and the subduction rolls switch. Some of the world’s most active faultlines are located in the Kekerengu region– making the geological folding reasonably new and varied over the field area. There’s faults down there that no one’s mapped and stratigraphy that’ll make your head spin (even if you’re a geologist).

Kek is a hardcore trip – once you get all your field work and mapping done, you’re left with one of those moments of pure, zen-like satisfaction and releif. Just to prove it, here’s a pic of me from last year seconds after I’d finished and seconds before I started getting drunk;

Yes, I’m Peter Jackson’s stunt double.