Kaitaia rugby club cleans up around reef

The Kaitaia Rugby Club Family Day attracted an estimated 40 people who spent a good part of Saturday picking up rubbish around the reef at Ahipara.

Spokesperson Clayton Murray said he and a handful of other Kaitaia rugby club stalwarts, notably Kiri and Harley Sloane, were behind events like this and the inaugural Kahawai Klassic fundraising fishing contest held at the end of last year.

As well as being a day of bonding for Kaitaia rugby stalwarts, players, administrators and supporters, Murray noted the clean up day was also a way to show the local community the club was moving away from the old-school mentality of just being all about playing rugby and drinking beer afterwards.

"Our whole mantra is to really get back involved in the community, and bring families back to our club, which is possibly the reason rugby has been dying up here," he said.

"We had a huge amount of support from our club. It was good to get out there doing community based work rather than just being purely about rugby."

Special praise was reserved for the Kaitaia JMB faction and those from the wider community.

By the end of the day, the volunteer workers had cleaned up a "whole swag of rubbish" from Te Kohanga to Blue House, enough to fill the back of a ute and a trailer.

Murray was disappointed to note a lot of the rubbish appeared to be more jetsam than flotsam (as in deliberately dumped) left behind by campers and found behind trees or under bushes in what often appeared to be callous cases of the old, "out-of-sight-out-of-mind" mentality.

There were also plenty of car parts picked up, presumably from various stolen cars driven around the reef to be trashed.

The event was made possible thanks to a number of individuals and organisations, with thanks going to the club members who came to help, Te Runanga o te Rarawa for providing the marquee and barbecue and Archibald Cars, while the Northland Regional Council provided sunscreen for the volunteer rubbish picker-uppers, and arranged free-dumping fees.

"It was brilliant. We had a barbecue and a dive afterwards. It was a stunning day with barely a cloud in the sky."

And, for now, barely a scrap of rubbish left around the points ...