Letters to the Editor

MHRS mess
Anyone who visits the Mangawhai sandspit can see hundreds of metres of torn windbreak mesh rolling around in the shallows of the estuary, plus heaps of fencing wire which trips people up as they walk along.

This was put there by Mangawhai Harbour Restoration Society about 20 years ago whilst fencing, but with sea level changes in the last decade it has now collapsed into the sea. This eyesore is a danger to marine life and a blot on our pristine landscape.

I know there have been black oystercatcher chicks, and adults, found with windbreak tangled round their bodies, preventing them feeding and flying. Next thing we'll be hearing about will be dead dolphins or orcas found with windbreak wound round their fins.

MHRS, if you really are ‘restoring’ Mangawhai harbour, the sandspit certainly never looked like this in years gone by! Come on MHRS, you put it there, clean up your mess!

Christine Silvester
Mangawhai

Road to ruin
We did a double take when we saw this headline (Living on a road to ruin) in your March 9 edition. My wife and I never use Lawrence Road, but the other day friends invited us to lunch and we turned in to this road all unsuspecting. Not for long. We had a pre-lunch cocktail that was shaken not stirred. At one point we thought we would be thrown off the road the surface was so bad.

It’s become a common practice to blame all our problems as a nation on colonisation. Well, we are from the UK but even the tiniest country road is tar sealed there. How can this possibly be considered a bypass for the current (Tomarata) bridge problems? Pity the local residents who live on this total dirt/death trap!

Peter and Linda Lyne
Mangawhai

Dunny delight
Was in a supermarket yesterday in Warkworth. Sadly, another of Auckland's growing, overspill neighbours now. Couldn't believe what I saw! People were struggling out with loads of lavatory (only common people say toilet) paper. My old mind wound back 70 years since, to Blaendare, in the hills above Pontypool in Wales, from whence I sprung.

A row of four miners cottages – no bathrooms or kitchens, and just one winter frozen, cold water tap. Sometimes I washed dad's back in a tin bath in front of the coal fire and he straight home from the colliery, where most worked then.

But what a lavatory! Twenty yards away down the garden was the te fach – the small house – the dunny. On the path down were gooseberries, blackcurrants and raspberries. To sit with the door open was to view the lovely Mynydd Maen – the mountain I loved.

Just across the way was Sion's (John's) farm and a milking shed which was old before Cook set sail for New Zealand.

Lavatory paper? No. In those bare years of want, we used ripped squares of newspaper, scrunched of course, for softness, before the final act. What luxury. A vista, a feed and a newspaper library. Boy! No wonder we old coots now are the more informed, better immuned and well read, eh?

Terry Harris
Mangawhai