The common view is that some people will help themselves to anything that isn't nailed down, but that did not apply to the table that has disappeared from Hihi's 'Table Rock'.
It wasn't exactly nailed down but it was securely wedged into the rock. And it hardly made easy pickings - the thief or thieves who took it would have had to walk the best part of a kilometre along the rocky shoreline to get there, unless of course they used a boat. Whatever happened, the fact that the table has gone has left at least one Hihi resident deeply unimpressed.
"It is a sad situation when there is a theft of public property that affects the whole community," Leonie Mateer said.
Locals had come up with the name Table Rock more than two years ago, after an unknown fisherman relocated a nearby picnic table to a secure position on top of the rock. This was the second theft in that location, Leonie added.
A family's diving gear had been taken a year ago.
