Whangarei tip a disgusting discovery

The discovery of another large scale illegal tip means at least three have been found in the past year

It was two summers ago. A stinking hot day, and the stench was high.

High in that sickly sweet smell that comes with rotting flesh. And high above Whangarei, on Memorial Drive.

I stopped pedalling, if it hadn't been for the stench, the break from grinding my way up to Parihaka on a clapped out mountain bike would have been welcome.

It's a ride, for this person anyway, that requires psychological stamina as much as physical.

It's a series of steep climbs which level out and let the lactic acid in your legs burn a little less.

But on this day, the stench interrupted my focus, and I stopped, expecting to see the carcass of something on the edge of the road, or somewhere close-by in the bush.

I could smell it, but I couldn't see it.

The bush can heighten odour, I think. Try climbing Parihaka on foot, early in the morning, and it smells like all the boy possums have woken up and taken an early morning wee on the side of the track.

Dog poo has a special smell first thing in the morning in the bush too.

Aside from the fact the owners hasn't collected it, it's particularly annoying on a track that dog owners fail to respect the local rules and keep their pets off.

On that summer's day, I couldn't find the source of the odour though.
"Dead possum," I thought to myself and got back on the bike.

Another ride that summer, someone had left a big screen TV on the side of the road.
An old school TV - the kind that if it fell off the shelf and landed on you it would break your leg.

It got me thinking why the person who left it, didn't roll it into the bush.

And I wondered what had been rolled into the bush to cause the stench that stopped me in my tracks on that earlier ride.

Some people just don't care, it seems, when it comes to dumping crap on the side of the road.

The photos on Page 1 of today's paper tell us a little about the human race, I think.
They are of an illegal roadside dump. There's no attempt to hide it.

Someone has been renovating a house, according to our photographer, who reported that wallpaper stripped off walls, gib, timber and assorted building materials are dumped on the roadside, not even down the bank.

And when you get to the edge of the road, the true nature of the dump (500m inside Whangarei District on a forestry road) is revealed. It appears to go 25m to 30m into the bush, although it has smothered and killed the bush as it has edged its way inwards.

There was also a sickly sweet stench that was no possum - it turned out to be a headless pig.

Quite a decent sized one, what a waste.

The video that photographer Michael Cunningham shot also gives a sense of the size of the dump, which has been there for around a year.

It's 500m inside the Whangarei District Council boundary which means we are paying for cleaning up the mess of, I'm guessing, a good proportion of Kaipara-ites.

This is now the third large scale dump to be found in our region. If three have been found in the past year, you can guarantee there are others out there.

Laziness, disrespect for the environment and the high cost of getting rid of rubbish via legal means are all factors.

Two out of three of those are human traits. Sadly, we can be a disgusting race.

The good news is there will be prosecutions, once someone has completed the delightful job of sifting through the rubbish.

And at least the person who threw an old number plate away won't be too hard to find.