Steve Braunias: After the flood

Unusual sights met those helping to clean beaches after the flood. Photo / Steve Braunias

OPINION

You do what you can, what you think might help or do even some small good and, when I saw someone saying on the Twitter machine on Sunday that their parents had gone to Milford Beach to pick up litter dumped there by the flood, I thought: I can do that. It was low tide just after 9am on Monday so I packed rubbish bags, a thermos of instant coffee and a bar of chocolate, and headed for the beaches along the coast of postcode 1011.

I live in postcode 1011. It’s nice. It’s the most expensive real estate in New Zealand so it ought to be nice. But there was a high, strangely sweet smell rising from the clumps of dark sediment washed on to the first beach I attended. Auckland Emergency Management issued an update: “We encourage people to stay away from beaches and waterways, as there is the potential for wastewater contamination.” It was issued at 10.30am. I read it later that day.

It was the beach closest to the harbour bridge. I’d seen a large blue plastic drum washed up there in the weekend and thought it might come in use. It had been washed away again on Monday and I filled about half a rubbish sack of litter. Rain was heading in across from the North Shore.

I wore a black Radio Hauraki cap and wondered whether people might think I was the station’s celebrated light entertainment announcer Jeremy Wells. At the next beach, a man appeared, and said, “It’s Mr Braunias, isn’t it?” Amazed he could tell the difference, I filled another half a sack with litter while he chatted about land tax. The rain had set in but it was a warm 22 degrees.

I went from beach to beach on an e-scooter, heading west. At each shore, I’d look across the water to the vague, low shape of the Te Atatū peninsula. The litter would be worse over there and along the banks of Henderson Creek. I only filled about a third of the sack at beach three – the usual debris of plastics, bottles, packing material, shoes, Styrofoam, clothespegs. I kept the clothespegs.

The blue drum had washed up at the next beach. Rocks had torn a jagged hole in its side. Across the water was the lovely pink cake of the Chelsea sugar factory, “that decaying old heap of sweetness” as Ian Wedde put it in a lovely poem about swimming towards it. Another half a sack, each collection emptied into a council rubbish bin. There were the bodies of storm-wrecked seabirds and a drowned rat, its tail still fleshy and obscene. I stopped for coffee and chocolate.

“Today is the pause day for Auckland,” MetService meteorologist Georgina Griffiths had said. There was a break in the weather and people were encouraged to assess damage, and clean gutters and drains, prepare for the next dump of rain. Coming home that day I ran into a neighbour whose house had flooded and was on the hunt for sandbags to help prevent another deluge. “There’s none to be had,” she said. Civil Defence had run out. “If you hear of any, let me know.”

At beach five, I saw the future: three properties on the edge of a massive slip. This is what climate change looks like and is going to continue to look like and it doesn’t look good. In his ode to the Chelsea sugar factory, Wedde describes the beachfront apartments in postcode 1011 as “condo battlements”. But they were losing the battle and the war was only going to get worse. Vans advertising carpet cleaning services and trucks with hydraulic pumps were motoring through the nice streets. One household had dragged soaked possessions on to the pavement - Peroni beer cartons, shopping bags from Farro, books for children by Margaret Mahy. A line in a Herald story that morning: “The disposal of waste is a growing issue.” Actor and producer Nisha Madhan said in the next day’s paper, “The world is in such a state. It’s drowning and burning at the same time.” Wayne Brown, unfortunately, resisted calls to resign as Auckland mayor. I collected a full sack of litter and made plans to go out west, to the teeming shores of Te Atatū, after the next storm.