Big Beach Cleanup, 19 November 2011
— Ellie Watts
The Big Beach Clean Up in not-so-big Cable Bay ended up being a day full of surprises, resulting in new friends and eight full rubbish bags of debris.
Christine (with tangled, dead penguin), Nicki, Sandie and Bobby (dog) at Cable Bay after their initial rounds
I hoisted the F&B flag up at 10:45 am on a very empty beach, expecting to pick over a fairly clean-looking Cable Bay by myself, when three women and a not-so-golden retriever emerged from the estuary with mud clinging to shins and tail and several bags of rubbish, complete with a couple of dead, monofilament-tangled penguins. Sandie Dallas, Christine Gabrielle, Nicki Everton and Bobby the dog had been at it since 10 am and had already covered a fair amount ground around the estuary side of Pepin Island. We spread out and picked over a well looked after Cable Bay, finding mostly synthetic rope, fishing line and the ubiquitous milk container rings buried beneath the stones and tangled in seaweed.
Everyone was still full of beans so decided to drive to Maori Pa Road and tackle Bishop's Peninsula and as much of the inner estuary as we had time for. The reeds and rushes fringing the estuary and crumbling edges of the peninsula had snagged their fair share of plastic bottles and bags, fishing and mussel farm twine and rope ends. A couple of recently used fire pits revealed a pile of tins and plastic bags and some maggoty sausages (which Bobby sneakily doubled-back for). A huge piece of corrugated iron was hauled out of knee deep mud and dragged back to the road and before long our rubbish bags were bulging. It appears that someone is admirably trapping rats on the peninsula, but we found a variable oystercatcher which appeared to have been killed by a stoat.
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Enthusiastic team with rubbish from Bishop's Peninsula, Delaware Bay
Around 2 pm, four mud-splattered women and one bedraggled retriever emerged from the bushes at Delaware Bay to flop on the road verge with a ute-load of rubbish. It was a great few hours of 'weka-ing' around the rocks and mud, hauling rubbish and swapping stories with these wonderful women. I hadn't counted on Cable Bay's clean-up resulting in that much rubbish, or three lovely, new friends.
