Waihi Beach, Monday 9 Jan

I had a surprise guest last week from the UK, who had stayed with me at Camellia Corner in 2006. Peter says we survived a tsunami together. His memory is better than mine. I was happy to offer him a bed for a few nights. On Monday we visited Waihi Beach along with all the other sight seekers. The Rena, which ran aground on Astrolabe Reef off Tauranga in October, broke in two in last weekend’s storm and debris and containers were washing up on Waihi Beach. This is usually a pristine nine kilometre stretch of white, sandy surf beach just 15 minutes from here. It was a sad and sorry sight on Monday morning. The beach was shut when we got there and it was very wild. I managed to get some photos of the containers, but not of all the milk powder which was building up on the shore. Seeing the containers bobbing about in the surf was spectacular. We headed off to Waihi for lunch and visited the open cast gold mine which sits right in the middle of the town and is an amazing sight. The trucks they use to bring out the rock are like giant Tonka toys. In the afternoon we called back at the beach, which was now open. Volunteers and the salvage company had already done an incredible job of cleaning up, but containers, huge beams and pallets of timber and packets of instant rice were still washing up. Some of the containers were firmly wedged in the sand. What amazed me was that, despite all the rubbish, timber and containers and who knows what still being washed up, some people were in swimming! And these weren’t the only hazards, as we discovered a patch of blue bottle jellyfish littering the sand! On Tuesday, the mess was apparently even worse, but the clean up efforts have been amazing. And they are ongoing. The shoreline of Matakana Island has been badly affected and now the debris is washing up further East at Papamoa, Matata and Maketu. It is not a good time for the Bay of Plenty, but at least things can be dealt with now.