Rowan Quinn
Radio New Zealand
Auckland, March 25, 2018
A two-minute drive to work has turned into an hour for a Far North woman living near a huge washout that has created a trench across State Highway One and literally divided a community.
The highway – and the only road connecting the area to the South – was sliced in two on Friday (March 23, 2018) after heavy rain took out a 20-metre section of the road that had covered a stream at Pukenui, about 40 kilometres North of Kaitaia.
Officially, it has cut off the very top tip of the North Island, but locals have been finding a way round through unmarked forestry routes.
Settlement ‘divided,’ literally
Houhora Four Square manager Jodie Ansell said the trench has literally divided the settlement.
“It is almost like an East Berlin, West Berlin sort of thing. It is not in the middle of a rural road – there is a house on one side and a house on the other and neither of those houses can meet at the moment,” she said.
Her work is on one side of the trench and her house on the other, so the two-minute commute had become an hour and she had to close the shop early because it is too hairy to drive at night.
But business had been steady, with anyone on the north side of the trench unable to make it to large supermarkets in Kaitaia.
Farmer worried
Khismar Crewther farms the northern-most dairy farm in the country and had been worried the Fonterra tanker might not get it through.
“If he did not turn up, we would have to drop all our milk and it would have just gone to the pigs,” she said.
After a tricky detour, it made the distance, but she was concerned that if the route got more churned up because of traffic and heavy rain, the next one may not get back.
The 90-Mile Beach Snapper Bonanza surfcasting competition had also brought hundreds of people to the area, but most had four-wheel drives so drove along 90-Mile Beach, she said.
Another experience
Hope Sucich lives in Te Hapua, 30 kilometres from Cape Reinga.
Her children already take a 2.5-hour school bus journey every day to Kaitaia College.
“They had to take a one-hour detour through the forest for something that was a five-minute drive if the (road) was there,” she said.
NZTA said it would be at least midweek before the road was repaired but it hoped to get one lane open before then.
However, heavy rain could delay that, it said.
Rowan Quinn is a Radio New Zealand Reporter. Indian Newslink has published the above Report and Picture under a Special Agreement with www.rnz.co.nz
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Photo Caption:
The washed-out Road, South of Pukenui between Whalers Road and Lamb Road
(Facebook Picture by Houhora Big Game & Sports Fishing Club, through RNZ)
