Doug Wardle, a permanent resident of one of the Clifton Motor Camp campsites has been coping with the bad weather but it's taking a toll on his surroundings. Reporter James Pocock/Video Warren Buckland.
Holiday campers in tents have been scared away from Hawke’s Bay holiday parks by cyclone weather, but those in motorhomes and caravans were mostly able to weather the wind and the rain.
Doug Wardle, a permanent resident of one of the Clifton Motor Camp campsites, said Cyclone Hale hadn’t beentoo bad for those parked up near the beachfront compared with previous years.
“We’ve had a bit of high sea as you can see around here on the foreshore, but not as bad as it has been the last two years, just after Christmas,” Wardle said.
“A couple of years ago we had waves flowing right through, out onto the road about 200mm deep, but this year we are just touching wood.”
He said Monday or Tuesday would have been the worst nights due to the wind and they were looking forward to being able to put their cray pot out again.
“We put them out before Christmas and got a good feed, but all of a sudden had to pull them back in because of the rough seas.”
An employee of Clifton Motor Camp said their campsites were smaller after rough high tides on Wednesday and Thursday mornings.
“We’ve had some coastal erosion, so some of our campsites are smaller, the sea was quite high and all of our tenters moved out of the camp, the ones that were booked in,” she said.
“The seawall that was constructed has generally stayed together, but behind the soil has eroded in some places.”
She said they will have to assess their campsites’ stability for heavy vehicles now.
Darrel Strickland, manager at Te Awanga Point Holiday park, said he felt they had been very lucky to get through the cyclone with no flooding.
“We didn’t get affected by it much at all actually, we were pretty lucky.”
He said they didn’t have any people in tents at the moment as most had decided to pull out due to the weather forecast.
Soil erosion visible behind a recently erected seawall made of rocks at Clifton Motor Camp. Photo / Warren Buckland
Karen Hema, managing Waimarama Holiday Park on behalf of a large family, said a few people with the right equipment and tenting had decided to stick it out through Cyclone Hale.
“We got quite strong winds, lots of rain, quite a bit of surface stuff going on, but the ground is soaking that up,” Hema said.
“It is the wind that causes the most damage out there. The rain is okay, but the strong winds can destroy tents, gazebos and that sort of thing.”
She said that the wind had scared off a large number of their normal visitors these holidays.
“Our camp would have been fully booked and now we have three campers in. We do have semi-permanents in, but as far as people coming on holidays, it has been cut short.”
She said most of their visitors were locals coming for the weekend and they were rebooking in for better weather.
“The majority that cancelled have rebooked to come back in, so we are quite lucky there.”
