Welcome to 40 South -- at long last

Travellers on SH1 near Rata, in the southern Rangitikei, now have no reason to feel lost.
A quick glance at a new roadside sign and they will know exactly where in the world they are at that moment ? Latitude 40 degrees South.
Unveiled yesterday, the sign is a testament to the perseverance of Hunterville Lion Club member Graeme Rhodes. He first came up with the idea of marking the "40th parallel" some 30 years ago but was "turned down flat" by the then roading authority, the No 8 District Roads Board.
However, a more recent approach to present highway guardian Transit New Zealand brought a swifter and more positive response. Transit organised the survey (to make sure the 40th parallel really was where Mr Rhodes said it was), paid for the sign and instructed Transit's highway signs maintenance contractor, Higgins, to install it.
While the new sign serves no easily recognisable practical purpose, Mr Rhodes and his Lions Club colleagues believe it will "be of a lot of interest to a lot of people".
It is understood there are few other roadside signs in New Zealand marking the invisible, imaginary lines that circle the earth and have huge significance for navigational purposes.
However, Mr Rhodes said that where those signs occurred, travellers stopped and photographed them as "curiosities". So the Rata sign has the potential to become another Rangitikei tourist attraction.
Latitude 40 South also has particular significance as marking the beginning of the "Roaring Forties" ? the gateway to the southern ocean, that stretch of water that round-the-world sailors love to hate. And the Rata Straight, SH1 south of the new sign, is also well known for its wind gusts.
Interestingly for an imaginary line of some importance, the southern 40th parallel doesn't connect with too many places outside Rata.
After leaving New Zealand, it touches a couple of small islands in Bass Strait, between Tasmania and the Australian mainland, hen crosses the Indian and South Atlantic oceans but doesn't hit land again until it reaches South America, where it cuts across southern Argentina and Chile.
From there it crosses the Pacific and arrives back in New Zealand close to the central Hawke's Bay town of Waipukurau and ends up back at Rata.
So what sparked Mr Rhodes' interest in this project three decades ago? The property he farms near Rata became an official Met Service weather recording site back then and is located at latitude 39 degrees 59 seconds south ? just 1 second (or a 60th of one degree) off the 40th parallel.
So near and yet so far.
PICTURED: Hunterville Lions (at left) Stephen Lewis and Graeme Rhodes and (far right) Richard Lambert, with sign maintenance men Ray Iwikau (left) and Joe Patelisio.