Epicentre of learning: the dairy farm teaching scientists how earthquakes form

A farm in New Zealand with an active fault line running through it has become a mecca for geologists seeking to unlock secrets deep underground

When dairy farmers Gray and Vicki Eatwell purchased a block of farming land just outside the tiny west coast village of Whataroa in New Zealand, the real-estate agent gestured vaguely at a cliff of striking, green-tinged rock on the border of their property at Gaunt Creek.

"She said: 'That's the alpine fault, the meeting of the Australian and Pacific plates'," says Gray Eatwell. "But we thought no more of it, locals were blasi(C) about it. I had no idea my whole life would become about that rock."