Island Harbour

To get through the gates onto Island Harbour and the South Port facility you must have photo I.D.
NO EXCEPTIONS it says on the gatekeepers cubby. NO EXCEPTIONS!
Once inside, we were ferried about in a bus to keep us from getting squashed by the gargantuan machines that trundle to and fro with bundles of logs in their jaws or steel containers strapped to their bellies. A 6 million dollar crane flexed its wirey muscles in readiness to lift those containers, two at a time, out from the bowels of waiting ships. Bulldozers fitted with giant mesh blades crawled over mountains of woodchip, reshaping them for reasons I couldn't fathom. Stevedores scuttled about, wearing tattoos and overalls. Warehouses stuffed with palm kernel expeller or milk powder lined the wharves. In the darkness sat barrels of molasses and bins of tapioca (Tapioca! Did you know that dairy cows loved to eat vast quantities of tapioca? I didn't!).
Inside the Board Room, things were just as heavy - graphs, maps, projections and rationales - the movements of ships, the prospects for Southland's economic boom, expansions on the waterfront - all very exciting to the progressively minded.
All food for thought and I'm thinking about it all.