Motueka’s Raumanuka scenery has changed rather a lot since last Friday’s floods.
A bank of driftwood barricades the shore, interspersed with fence posts, apples, corn cobs, the occasional beehive frame, and dozens upon dozens of apple bins. Up to 1000 of them, in fact, scattered throughout the district.
Golden Bay Fruits’ operations manager Amanda Brooks says that the bins were washed down from the Motueka Valley, and she estimates that despite being stored away from the water’s edge, between 800 and 1000 of them have “pretty much floated all the way down the river”.
The 1m by 1.2m wooden bins have been spotted bobbing around Tasman Bay, with reports of them washing up at Kina, Kaiteriteri, Medlands Beach in the Abel Tasman, and all the way around to Pōhara in Golden Bay. There are even bins deposited high in the trees behind Motueka’s Parker St.
Golden Bay Fruit is sending out crews to retrieve them from their incidental destinations around the district.
The bins will be salvaged and repurposed where possible – although most are damaged beyond repair, Amanda says.
“We want to clean up, as a community company,” she says. “We don’t want to leave them rotting around the place.”
She hopes most of this work will be done in the coming few days and is encouraging people to contact the Golden Bay Fruits packhouse if any more bins wash up.
Amanda says that although the Golden Bay Fruits’ orchardists have “a bit of a clean-up” ahead of them, initial reports are that they were lucky compared to many others.
“We got off pretty lightly really, as an organisation overall.”
A council spokesperson says there is an “extensive floating debris raft” spanning from Kina to Golden Bay, which is largely made up of timber, apple bins, orchard netting, hay and silage bales, along with some deceased cattle.
“We’ve even had reports of a couch and gas bottles seen floating in coastal water somewhere near Abel Tasman National Park,” he says.
“Our harbourmaster is currently assessing the potential risks posed by both floating and washed-up debris, but he warned boaties and all water users to be aware of the dangers of the large volumes of floating debris currently in Tasman Bay following the storm.”
