O’CONNOR’S CREEK

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 29 October 1928, Page 4

O’CONNOR’S CREEK

MORE MOTORISTS STUCK UP PROMPT ACTION NEEDED Since the comments in “The Mail” concerning the large number of motorists who had been pulled out of O’Connor’s Creek, it is learned that there have been many more victims. Amongst these have been motorists who have been crossing the creek for years and who were entirely misled by appearances and considered it quite safe to attempt to cross. It is the general opinion that the bottom of the creek lias been scoured out, the water being consequently deeper than before. It is to be hoped that no further time will be lost by the controlling authority in meeting the acute position that has arisen. Prompt action is necessary in the interests of the travelling public—at least to indicate the depth oi water. The inconvenience and loss, through either being unable to cross the creek or getting stuck in it and having to he pulled out by adjacent farmers, are considerable, and on such an important highway should not he allowed to continue.

To the Editor) Sir.—Your timely and very, temperate remarks on the above subject which appeared in a recent number of the “Mail” will carry the support of a considerable number of people which ever side of the creek they happen to- live. I should imagine from the very nature of those notes that the writer could not have been one of the unfortunates whom a kindly farmer whom we all know lives not far from the creek pulled out, otherwise, .Sir, I venture to suggest they would not have passed your censorship. On Thursday last, with a considerable amount of business on hand, I ventured to the edge of the creek hoping it was passable, but to my amazement found the decking of the footbridge spanning the creek under water so that I could not even walk across, and instead had to driye round to a point but a few hundred yards from where I had previously viewed the scene. The next day, again in a hurry to pass that way (and these were not pleasure runs) the water was a bit'lower, and from the decking of the footbridge I measured the depth of water, which was no less than 4ft. 6ins, or say six to nine inches above my car bonnet.

This is really a disgraceful state of affairs, and I hope the matter of the construction of some sort of bridge will be pushed. The body, which ever it may he, which is responsible for the existing state of affairs, is guilty of a grave dereliction of duty, and the sooner its members can see their way to put the matter right by making it possible to pass the better for their good name. We don’t want gauges; we don’t want anything but a bridge. Not necessarily like the one we hear is being built at Sydney, but just one that will safely carry a car across ahoye high flood levels.

It should he borne in mind that the alternative route is not always passable in had weather, and on Thursday last I only just succeeded in getting through the swirling waters past Appleby bridge. It is true that if Appleby bridge is impassable there is still Brightwater; failing that it might be possible by taking the foothills roads ,to work a way round Wakefield and Dovedale and the Motueka river of one’s destination in .Motueka, but of that I am not certain, as I haven’t tried and don’t intend to, claiming that it is the right of the members of the community to be able to pass the shortest way to his bushess hamely : over O’Connor’s Creek.—l am, etc.,

P.S.—We don’t want. to wait ten years for that bridge. We may all be dead by then—drowned maybe in O’Connor’s Creek.