Home from Pukawa

An incident on the road

We had just crossed the Mokau River Bridge. The bridge is a beautiful, graceful curve, that solves a difficult engineering problem in a way that does not detract too much from the scenery.

For decades, Mokau had a one-way, ugly bridge straight across the river, with an impossible turn at the northern end (speed limit something like 15 kph).

Now you can cross at the normal speed and carry on to the south around the sweeping curve that takes you up to look over the mouth of the river and the beach to the north of the village.

A hundred metres or so to the south of the bridge we were surprised and then alarmed to see two sheep grazing right on the edge of the tarseal. As we gathered speed, we noticed that a further half-dozen or so were grazing in the verge, a few steps away from the roadway itself.

Behind us we knew Matt and Ev and their two children in their SUV, and Andrew and Julia and their baby in their Toyota, were also coming home from the weekend. And there were plenty of other families travelling on the State Highway as well.

Our only other encounter with an animal on the road had been many years ago, and had resulted in serious damage to the car and the animal, although luckily not to us. But the potential for real injury was stark in our minds.

We decided to phone 111 and report the situation to the Police, who surely would have some way of sorting it out. I took out my cellphone and got a first response, but by the time they switched across to the Police line, we must have been beyond the range of the network.

It does seem to me that if a communications company is going to call itself a "network" it should be able to provide a service that will work at least on all the State Highway system as well as in urban areas, and on major country roads.

It was not until over 30 minutes had gone by that we at last had a call from the Police returning our first call.

I explained the situation. The courteous policewoman did not know where Mokau is, so I had to explain that. Once that was sorted she noted the details and said they would contact the Council, who handle such problems, which were not the responsibility of the Police.

Again, I find it incredible that a potentially hazardous situation can be allowed to wait 30 minutes because the so-called networks can't provide phone service, and then hours more because, on a Sunday evening in mid-Summer, it is such a low priority for the Police that they have to find a Council official to get someone in  Mokau to look after their stock properly.

Huge articulated trucks, many heavily laden, pound along that stretch of road every hour of the day and night, and trying to avoid wandering stock even in the light could cause a major incident.

So we are expected, I guess, to cross our fingers and hope that the sheep stay on the grass and that no unfortunate motorist has to take split-second evasive action because a sheep suddenly startles and rushes across the highway.

 

Here we are after our tramp on Sunday morning; Evelyn took the photo. From left:

Julia with Sophie, Aria, Denise, Rod, me, Matthew, Carys, Margie, Andrew with Joshua (Christina and Lito's eldest), Spencer, Lito with 2-month old Asher, Christina.