GREYMOUTH BAR

Grey River Argus, 26 January 1943, Page 4

GREYMOUTH BAR

WORST FOR MANY YEARS

Heavy Deposits Outside

Describing the present condition of the Greymouth bar as the worst for a number or years, the Harbourmaster (Captain H Moar) said yesterday that it had not, in his time, presented quite the problem that it did now. At present the inner bar, at a point almost opposite the Tip Head, rises sharply on either side in a bump which, though not considerable in extent, reduces the minimum depth at low water to nine feet. Records show that such bumps, and of even greater height, have appeared in the past, but the position just now is complicated by the unusually bad state of the bar outside, to as far as half a mile out. Serious shoaling of the inner bar in the past has always been accompanied by either a sharp drop beyond this, or at worst a falling away within a reasonably short distance. In such conditions there was somewhere for the troublesome deposits to go if they were shifted by fresh in the river. Should they be shifted now, it is more than likely that they would only add to the deposits on the bar outs'-de. The inner bar was in a state comparable with its present one about five years ago, but conditions have never been the same outside in the last twenty years. Captain Moar said that last year had been a bad one in general, probably the worst since 1930. In the past the bar had generally a depth oi from 17 to 20 feet after floods, but it had seldom, if ever, been more than 14 feet in the last 12 months. The peculiar nature of the problem had been illustrated in the recent fresh in the river, when it was expected that the state of the inner bar would be improved, but this had not been so; and the rough sea and westerly and south-westerly winds of last Wednesday had, pushed still more material inside on the inner bar. Given another month or two of fine weather, with more westerly seas the position would only get worse. Yesterday the bar, with a high tide of ten feet, was 19 feet 6 inches at high water—and the high tide is high just now, and will be about two feet lower at the end of the week.

Asked about the possibility of improvement, the Harbourmaster said that Greymouth harbour would always be up against these problems. So far as the immediate difficulty was concerned, a moderate fresh would not do much good. What was required was a very severe storm in every way—“a real big old Vvest Coast storm,” as Captain Moar put it. .