By PHILIP ENGLISH
Great Barrier Island's notoriety as a car cemetery - where ancient, bald-tyred bombs rust away when they conk out - may be over.
Until 1996, cars on the island did not require a warrant of fitness.
Many saw out their last days in various states of disrepair, some allegedly held together with nothing more than manuka branches and a little No 8 fencing wire.
Now that is changing - the wrecks of Great Barrier are being crushed and barged to Auckland for melting down.
Yesterday, a barge-load of 354 compressed wrecks arrived at Jellicoe Wharf, at the Port of Auckland, as part of an operation to remove 1400 car bodies that have piled up on the island over the past 10 years.
The Auckland City Council initiated the clean-up.
No vintage cars were thought to be in yesterday's load. But there were models of once-renowned 50s and 60s British makes such as Standard Vanguards, Wolseleys and Land-Rovers, along with numerous Holdens.
An old hand-me-down Volvo took a while before it succumbed to the crusher, said Sean McCarthy, of Great Barrier-based Coles Equipment, the company which won the tender to rid the island of the wrecks.
"Once we got the contract we had another look at the stockpile and wondered why we did it," joked Mr McCarthy about the amount of work involved in the job.
He said the cars, which also included wrecked Japanese imports, had been squashed before the mobile crusher arrived on the island.
Many of the cars were full of beer bottles and rubbish and their oil had to be drained as part of the environmentally friendly exercise.
A former island police officer, George Mason, said the wrecks were a talking point among islanders and visitors but he said they would not be missed.
"It was a rare sight to see the barge pull out. It looked like a bird's-nest, very poorly made."
The barge is expected to make another trip loaded with wrecks, but hundreds more old bombs are still believed to litter the island.
Turning Great Barrier's car junkyard into a jewel
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