New Zealand is racing to be ready for the Magnitude 8 earthquake due along its Alpine Fault

Pressure is building along one of the most active fault lines in the world and New Zealand is in a race to be ready. 

The Alpine Fault runs along the country's South Island and it has a history of sudden movements. 

Scientists can read the lakes and old-growth forests in the foothills of the Southern Alps and learn about what's come before. 

What they have found reveals a great earthquake, one of the biggest in New Zealand's modern history, is due.  

The spectacular snow-capped Southern Alps straddling the coast of New Zealand's South Island are an ancient reminder of the land's turbulent history.

For millions of years, the shifting Australian and Pacific tectonic plates below have been pushing together, buckling, breaking the ground and moulding this mountain range.

Where the two plates meet on land is known as the Alpine Fault.

An 850-kilometre seam in the Earth's crust that traces an almost perfect path along the western foothills of the alps.

Near Milford Sound, the fault has left visible scars that cut through the landscape.

It's a familiar sight all along the west coast.

To the north, at Gaunt Creek, the fault line extrudes from the ground. It's one of the few places on earth where you can touch a fault.