Rissington: A bridge to somewhere, at last

The opening of the Rissington bridge. Photo / Paul Taylor

Rissington was Friday. Hopefully, it’s Dartmoor on Monday.

Hastings District Council’s (HDC) network of bridges is going back up, one by one. Fourteen more bridges, either washed away or severely damaged by Cyclone Gabrielle, are in the process of being replaced as this devastated region starts to get moving again.

The emotion of seeing the Mangaone River properly passable again on Friday was too much for Isabelle Crawhaw. The HDC rural community board deputy chairwoman - and local farmer - had been asked to make a few remarks once foot traffic had been allowed over the new Bailey bridge.

“There were definitely times when we felt we were on our own out here and we had to control the narrative if we wanted to get things done. It’s definitely emotional, but the emotion is a mixture of pride, but also the realisation that - gosh, we’ve got a long, long road ahead of us,” Crawshaw later told Hawke’s Bay Today.

A temporary bridge is definitely better than ferrying children and supplies across the Mangaone on inflatable boats, as was the case in the weeks after the cyclone.

Then there was a culvert across the river, and now there’s a bridge.

“It was huge. It was the difference between a community going a bit insane, it’s fair to say,” Rissington farmer and resident Ben Absolom said of the culvert.

Lots of people saw videos of children going across the river to get to school. They marvelled at the ingenuity and courage and thought the whole thing quite novel.

But few seemed to appreciate this was the only way of getting people and supplies in and out, or that this invention by necessity was occasionally being held back by red tape.

Absolom is fond of an adage he was recently told: “You either need a war or a disaster to create change and bring communities together.”

“Although that seems really extreme, it has brought a community together like you wouldn’t believe, and I think it’s made people in the wider community and urban areas realise that there’s some pretty cool stuff that can happen when you allow it to happen,” he said.

“We’ve got to keep working together with the district council and regional council, because there’s a whole lot of grey areas for everyone in the community, and that’s not just Rissington. It’s Dartmoor; it’s Esk Valley.”

The opening of the Rissington bridge. Photo / Paul Taylor

It took four weeks to get the Bailey bridge up at Rissington, much of that time spent consolidating the surrounds so that the bridge could actually be erected.

Downer Group, Fulton Hogan, Lattey Group, Berkett Earthmovers and myriad sub-contractors and locals all contributed, under the watch of proud HDC transportation operations manager Adam Jackson.

“The Dartmoor bridge is probably being completed as we speak and likely to be opened by Monday,” Jackson said.

These bridges are a start, but the real hard work in these rural areas hasn’t even begun.

“For farmers, it’s going to be a decade before some put their last piece of permanent fencing back in,” said Crawshaw.