Shelley Bridgeman: High tide

A wave crashes over the front fence of a Haumoana property. Photo / Hawkes Bay Today

The coastal Hawke's Bay area encompassing the communities of Haumoana, Te Awanga and Clifton is slowly but surely becoming gentrified.

Luxury lodge The Farm at Cape Kidnappers, sprawls high up in the undulating landscape.

Elephant Hill vineyard was recently built at a reported cost of $40-million and Parkhill Farm offers rural lots set among the vines with views of the Pacific Ocean.

The area at large may be attracting overseas visitors and out-of-towners to sample the wines, the sunshine and the rental cottages but for some local residents life is not quite so idyllic.

For the homes positioned right on the coast, tightly wedged between the road and the sea, are under threat from a rising tide.

These houses are at risk of being swept away in a storm and, according to estimates by a coastal engineer, the beach is eroding at a rate of 60cm annually.

In March last year, when the waves were said to be as high as the houses themselves, residents of twenty-one Haumoana properties were advised to evacuate.

When I was a girl my grandparents had a house here. They'd owned it since the 1950s and I even remember living there for a short time.

Back in the seventies, discarded washing machines and old tyres were thrown haphazardly on the stony shore in an attempt to stem the continually encroaching tide. Some driven railway irons encircled with tyres remain today.

For the past twenty-five years my father, John Bridgeman, has resided in this same family home. In big storms he's had sea water throughout the lower level and one nearby cottage which he also owned was literally swept away.

In 2002 he built a $100,000 steel-and-concrete seawall in front of his home for protection. He's recently applied to the two local authorities, Hastings District Council and Hawke's Bay Regional Council, for consent to build a second wall on the seaward side of the existing structure which will cost about the same amount.

While the existing wall is nearing the end of its life, the two walls in combination have an expected twenty-year life, according to a report by coastal consultants.

"With some TLC I expect sixty years," says Dad. "But only time will tell."

My father's not the only local with such preoccupations.

Community group Walking on Water is lobbying for a series of groynes to be erected in the hope of solving erosion issues on the coast.

A May 2011 local authority report, which says at-risk homes are likely to be uninhabitable within five years if no action is taken, agrees a groyne field is appropriate but also acknowledges the possibility of a "managed retreat".

Of course, once the houses are gone the road is next in line to be threatened by rising sea levels.

For Dad it's about preserving more than bricks and mortar. This property has been in his family for almost as long as he remembers and he has a strong personal connection to the area.

I have a feeling that he'd spare no expense in saving the home that means so much to him. A similar a-man's-home-is-his-castle sentiment was comically explored in the Australian film The Castle in which the lead character successfully battled authorities to prevent his property from being taken over by the adjacent airport.

In recent newspaper articles my father has been compared to King Canute, who, legend has it, took his throne to the ocean to show he couldn't hold back the waves.

But if Dad is granted the consent for which he's lodged an application, it seems that he just might achieve what that ancient monarch failed to accomplish.