REMARKABLE CHANGES

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17502, 26 February 1931, Page 2

REMARKABLE CHANGES

CONTOUR OF COUNTRY COASTUNE TOSSED UPWARD NEW PENINSULAS .FORMED Tiio country between Napier and Wairoa has not suffered the widespread devastation as a result of the earthquake that the earlier reports, which filteren through from those districts seemed to suggest. Nevertheless, remarkable changes in configuration have taken place, the most immense of these being found on the coast near Mohaka. Hero the coastline lias taken a new contour, and. owing to its uplift, residents state that journeying on foot one may now travel dry shod along a wide sandy beach, between the rivers, as far its Napier. Prior to the earthquake, this would have been impossible even at the lowest state of the tide. These upheavals, however, have seriously affected only a narrow strip of coastal land around the bay. The land has been most shattered close to the coast from Napier to Mohaka. Inland, the crumbled hilltops, with deeply fissured sides, are fairly quickly lost. What land movements have taken place away from the coast are confined to specific localities such as the Matahoura and Waikari Gorges, and the alluvial plains bordering rivers and swamps. In the gorges the loose hillsides have fallen away exactly as has the Bluff Hill at Napier, completely blocking the road. At Mohaka the tremendous upthrust to which this locality must have bee:, subject is plainly visible. There is direct evidence of an upward and downward movement. In the hills above the Maori village the floor of an entire valley has suntc at least 50ft. in a crumpled mass. THREE NEW PENINSULAS Manv of the ridges for miles around resend led newly-made fillings, while the main road has disappeared entirely for a!,out half a mile. The most remarkable evidence of the tremendous forces brought into play is to be seen near the month of the Mohaka River. Within a distance of about live miles three new peninsulas have been thrown out from the shove, and there has been a general rise in the level of the beach. Where the river enters the sea. a noble bluff lias been shaken down into a heap oi dust and clay boulders. A huge area of the, sea is discolored with the discharge from the river which, in the past, few days, has begun to flow over a huge slip, which blocked it about 20 miles inland. Northward there juts oat a promontory of what was formerly iit-oat 200 acres of Mr. O’Grady’s pas 'tore and southward a familiar bluff, locally known as Big Elisabeth, lies in ruins - in one of the longest peninsulas tint has been formed. It is the only coastal upheaval that can be fairly easily reached from tl* main road hut it « tvnicnl of some dozen of others, which extend from Mohaka down to Tangoio. tremendous convulsions

Big Elizabeth was on Mr. J. Tate s station of SCO acres, and it is estimated KTSiU 160 «aw l»v„ W.. The fact that raupo plants, which the only ones in the locality and o j- • found growing Jgjj Tn but were thrown out

from the, base, carrying beach shingle, sand and drift wood up with them, and bringing the land down behind. A big schiiapper was found 50ft. above the water, and shells and flotsam can be, seen at a height of about 70ft, oil the new ground, which is so convulsed and contorted that the journey over it is like climbing in a miniature mountain range.