Crumbling cliffs at NZ’s edge
Southland has a wide and varied landscape, but head along the coast and crashing waves are removing part of it.
Autumn is bringing heavy seas, and with low tide just a name more than anything else, the sea still thumps up onto the edge of the beach, lapping against the cliff faces.
At Orepuki, about an hour west of Invercargill, erosion isn’t just spoken about, it’s highly visible. Cliff faces aren’t cliff faces any more, they’re spread across the beach.
Orepuki Tavern owner Alistair McCracken said during the past five or six years the erosion had sped up.
‘‘Prior to that the sea was always a bit rough, but there was never the erosion that we have seen over the last half a dozen years.’’
McCracken believes that at least 7, and up to 10, metres have fallen away during the past few years.
From his spot behind the bar, McCracken has
a direct video link to the breakers at Orepuki, keeping a close eye on how they are rolling in, knowing exactly the damage different winds and swells will do.
Walking along the beach, McCracken was quick to point out fallen lumps of cliff strewn on the sand.
Standing next to one piece of completely intact peat cliff, freshly broken off from the cliff face, McCracken looked at it in amazement. The imposing lump of peat towered 4 to 5 metres above him.
But local resident Margaret McCullough said Orepuki translated to crumbling cliffs, and suggested the area was always known to have cliff faces falling into
the ocean.
Asked if she found the continued erosion a concern, she was quick to go back to the translation of the name.
McCullough said it had always been described as crumbling cliffs, and she can’t see that changing.
McCracken believes it will be a matter of time, perhaps as short as two decades, before the erosion becomes so bad that new houses are banned by Southland District Council on the ocean side of Orepuki.
‘‘With the ocean eating away at the cliff face as fast as what it is, building a new property or buying land where the boundary fence is disappearing into the sea is just too dangerous.’’
Danger and the cliff face have become a common theme thanks to erosion. A fence along the edge of the cliff face used to keep walkers and nature lovers away from potentially dangerous falls, but now that fenceline is about to crumble away onto the beach.
McCracken said only a couple of years ago there was space between the edge of the cliff and the fence. That space is now well gone, eaten away by the vicious tides.
He said autumn hasn’t been kind to the cliff faces, while winter had the potential to be an angry beast.
McCullough said while there’s a lot of beauty to the beach, there’s a significant danger to it.
‘‘I wouldn’t walk underneath the cliff face, you just never know when tonnes of peat may come crashing down.’’
‘‘I wouldn’t walk underneath the cliff face, you just never know when tonnes of peat may come crashing down.’’