– Suzanne Williams

TO one who does not “do Facebook”, the Beacon letters and opinions are a great source of interest and stimulation.  A friend of mine has just arrived home from the UK and the first thing she did (after a tour of the garden, making sure the ocean was still there and making a cup of tea) was to read six weeks’ pile-up of letters in the Beacon.

 I was captivated and ensnared by the issue of Wednesday, October 9, and its coverage of so many contentious subjects of interest to the people of the district. For once, I found myself in agreement with all of the opinions, even D Dawson’s.

We had, first, the so-called freedom campers. As a former one myself, I am concerned that attitudes like those of some Edgecumbe residents still prevail when it should be obvious that when properly controlled (ie, self-contained, or restricted to areas served by public toilets), the large mobile sector of mostly seniors with spare cash to spend should be most welcome in a town.  

All of this and more was clearly articulated by Mr Meharry in his article.  

Although, that said, it was certainly a strange place to build a dump station; it is totally unnecessary to have them in the middle of town, especially where children are passing all the time – I can see the attraction for them.  

If that is okay, why doesn’t the council place the stock-truck effluent dumps in the towns?

Then we find that Coastlands has been landed with an incomprehensible choice of name for a new road  – “Acacia”.  Are we in New Zealand or Australia?  

When I was a child on the family farm, there were nasty, thorny acacia shrubs acting as hedges bordering the paddocks.  

Heaven help you if you fell into one, which I did from horseback once.  Then, late in life, I was involved in helping eradicate pest wattles – also acacia – which had invaded the beautiful John W. Hall Arboretum in Thames; they had taken over, much like the privets and Taiwan cherries are doing as well.

I have also removed many young wattles from Waiewe Reserve and pulled a few when walking the Toi Track. Is this the sort of name we wish to apply to a road here?

I see on the Whakatāne District Council website that one objective of new road naming is that such names should “reflect the history, culture and identity of the area”.  

It seems to me that Waana Davis Place was a great name for that street; or how about the name of a native tree which once grew there  –  in memoriam?

Then, we find that apparently our ever-active council has come up with a new way to spend the money that we don’t have.  

Hot on the heels of the reckless spend-up on Rex Morpeth, comes Mitchell Park.  

What can I say that hasn’t already been said by Philip Jacobs and Sandy Milne?  

Except, perhaps, to ask why the (privately owned) market business moved from Rex Morpeth in the first place and surely they can factor in a portaloo or two to the cost of stalls?  

Plus, as one of the councillors always ready to “splash the cash”, Toni Boynton needs to consider her remarks a bit more.  

Finally, we find, resurfacing, an awful issue like a cancer in my gut:  the Saga of the Huts.

As Derek Walker clearly sets out, this very one-sided controversy and outcry has not made a blind bit of difference to the attitude of the “powers that be”, and Te Uru Taumatua has been allowed to forge ahead in its vandalism of destroying other people’s serviceable property, simply because the trustees’ delicate feelings are offended by the huts’ existence and their reminder of colonialism.

One example of this – one of the destroyed huts was owned by the Department of Conservation and used in part by the Kokako Trust to service traplines and monitor a recently re-introduced population of kokako.  

Now, no one knows whether these beautiful, unique birds are surviving in Te Urewera under the onslaught of predators running wild.  

There appears to be no plan in place by TUT to care for their wildlife and any attempt by me to contact TUT is fruitless.

How can this be in our supposedly rational country?  

What is TUT’s plan for dealing with the invasive pests in its whenua?  Are we to end up with a silent forest, devoid of birdsong?  How can we save the remaining nine huts?  Or can we trust in the more far-sighted, courageous Tūhoe people to sway their strange governing body?

I am reminded of chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution, when China, beginning in 1966, also “cut off its nose to spite its face”; as short-sighted human bureaucracies have done from time immemorial.