With a private income, English scientist Charles Trechmann was able to travel widely and devote himself to studies of archaeology and geology. Interested in Triassic paleontology, he made several visits to New Zealand between 1914 and 1916, revisiting known localities, collecting fossils, and examining collections. His work helped resolve arguments about the age of Permian–Triassic rocks near Nelson, and provided a foundation for later studies of Triassic fossils.

Trechmann returned to New Zealand more than 30 years later, and travelled around meeting a new generation of geologists, who remembered him as an entertaining eccentric with broad scientific interests.

Here he is in the Waipara gorge, Canterbury. Containing unusual fossils, called Waiparaconus, it has long been known to students as the fossil asparagus bed.