Burnouts, skids, donuts doing major Palliser damage

By Ray Lilley

“It’s absolutely shameful the damage that has been done to our land” by 4WD, quad bikes and other vehicles being used to do burnouts, skids and donuts on tangata whenua properties east of Cape Palliser lighthouse on the southern coast.

“It’s indiscriminate, all over the place, as they (drivers) think they have the right to go anywhere, doing donuts and wheelies in the paddocks,” Haami Te Whaiti, chair of the Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa Tāmaki nui-a-Rua Settlement Trust told The Star.  

Drone footage of some of the damage has been collected by the landowners.

“There are lot of those in the drone footage … driving backwards and forwards when it was quite wet and going through the wheel ruts. We want that stopped.”

“We can identify some of the vehicle number plates” from drone footage, he said.

“We’ve also had serious fires from freedom campers and divers. It’s beeen a constant problem for us over several years.”

“The whole area from Maungatoitoi Stream to Stonewall Reserve and stream (being used by 4WD drivers and others) is all designated as an historic place – from back in the 1990s by the Historic Places Trust (now HeritageNZ) because of the wahi tapu (sacred) heritage sites,” he said.

The designated area includes Kupe’s Sails, a Pa site along that stretch and “an area where plenty of burials of tupuna (ancestors) are known to be along that coastal frontage,” Te Whaiti said.

“Burials are often exposed by the sea _ but they can be anywhere” in the area, including at Stonewall reserve.

The whole area from the lighthouse to Stonewall stream is private land owned by five whanau groups. 

“They (drivers and others) don’t have permission to go across any of our land”/whenua at Matakitaki-a-Kupe/Cape Palliser, Te Whaiti said.

While it’s “essential to have the area grazed (by stock), stock get killed _ and the (wheelie) damage impacts the paddocks,” making them unfit for grazing.

“It’s gone too far and we need to know whether the council or the government is going to step in and stop it happening any more.

‘We have asked for a meeting with the (South Wairarapa District) council and are waiting to meet with them,” he added.

To date, “the council has not been prepared to take any responsibility, and have only put up a sign and given the landowners (the five whanau groups) the right to put a gate across there.”

However, a steel gate installed by DOC at the Stonewall Stream had been cut into pieces by someone using a welding torch.

On some other paper roads in the South Wairarapa area, Te Waiti said landowners have erected fences to prevent public access. The Palliser owners don’t know whether that has been done with council agreement. 

SWDC roading manager Tim Langley said the paper road – which at one stage extended all the way to White Rock – is a strip of land through private property which the council does not maintain.

“Boundary fences to contain these larrikins are the responsibility of the adjoining landowners” under the Local Government Act, he said. 

“But we will help to protect archeological sites,” he noted, adding “there are a number of cultural sites along that coastline which should be respected for what they are. We are certainly sympathetic to the cause down there.”

One problem was that “is such an isolated spot, and is an hour away at least for police,” Langley told The Star.