OKARITO NOTES

Grey River Argus, 5 July 1944, Page 2

OKARITO NOTES

[Our Own Correspond ent j. Visitors to Okarito in the past week include: Mr. Purcell, Mr. Pamment and Mr. J. Mulvany (Franz Josef Glacier), Mr. and Mrs. W. Adamson and June Adamson, and Mrs. Murdoch (Wataroa). Good weather, with heavy frosts, is being experienced at Okarito. Heavy southerly seas have been beating the coast for the past month, and these have pushed the mouth of the lagoon to the north and completely blocking it. This does not, of course, preclude the possibility of establishing a harbour in the lagoon, which is seven miles long and three miles wide and tidal all the way. In three years the mouth has shifted a mile south. If the mouth were cut out where it is wanted, and walls were built to keep it in one place, it would be there for all time, and had this been done some years ago a cheap harbour —the best on the West Coast —could have been made. Okarito has no river of the kind which causes so much trouble at Greymouth, Hokitika and Westport, where shingle is carried down all the time to cause shallow water on the bar.