The battle for Marahau

Is the once-peaceful seaside village at the entrance to Abel Tasman National Park being spoiled by the tourist dollar? SALLY KIDSON investigates tense times in Marahau.

Neil Gorrie has had enough. After a lifetime of holidaying at Marahau, he is selling up.

His two-storey concrete-block bach at the entrance to the beachside community is on the market. A handwritten "for sale" sign in the upstairs window says his boat and trailer are included.

"Marahau used to be my life," the retired tradesman says. "I'd come home from work on Friday afternoon and the children and the cat would be loaded in the car and off we would go."

From an old armchair with views of the lagoon and beach behind him, he tells stories of his idyllic Kiwi childhood spent collecting cockles and fishing by the sea.

His parents were the first bach-holders to build in the area and he was introduced to the place as a six-week-old baby.

The whistle with which his wife, Pauline, summoned their daughter and son at meal times still hangs near the sink. Now, his grandchildren visit.

Marahau was his passion until the past five years or so, he says. His children no longer live in the region and after he sells up, he intends to travel.

Also, he complains, the holiday spot has "gone to the pack" and the Tasman District Council doesn't seem to care.

He points the finger at sea-kayaking and water-taxi companies chasing the tourist dollar. They point the finger back, complaining about a handful of grizzlers who won't accept the outside world coming to Marahau as the launch point for trips to Abel Tasman National Park.

Vig Franklin and Will Simes are others with long-term links to Marahau who worry about its future.

Mrs Franklin lives in the community, her husband's family having long-standing ties there. Mr Simes is an organic farmer from "up the valley", whose family has had a bach there for decades.

A major complaint is about the fleet of tractors that rumble up, down and across the Marahau foreshore year round, driven by tourism operators towing water taxis and kayaks for launching. In summer, their movements number more than 100 a day. Where they drive on the beach to reach water deep enough for launching, they can leave holes so deep, up to one metre in places, that resource consent had to be issued last year so diggers and trucks could move sand from elsewhere on the beach to fill them.

Mr Gorrie, Mrs Franklin and Mr Simes fear lasting environmental damage, including to cockle beds and eel grass.

"I used to go floundering here and see lots of flounder," Mr Gorrie says. "Now I'm lucky to see one."

He says the tourist operators claim to be "all about nature and the environment", but don't seem to care about Marahau.

Mr Simes agrees. "They may be very thorough in picking up their [chocolate] bar wrappers in the [Abel Tasman] park, but back here, we've got to wear it.

As the park's southern entrance, Marahau was bound to grow, and so it proved when visitor numbers started to rise from the 1980s, further boosted when water-taxi operations arrived in the 1990s. The subsequent boom in sea kayaking, with Marahau emerging as the main base for kayaking trips into the park, fed the growth.

It is a cold spring Monday and rain clouds are misting the hills behind Marahau when The Nelson Mail pays a visit.

The busy tourist season is still months away, but in the hour we spend on the rock groyne near the boat ramp, at least eight tractor trips are made up and down the narrow track down the beach to deeper water, their drivers wearing earmuffs to protect their hearing.

Mrs Franklin says it is nothing during the peak of summer to see 15 to 20 tractors parked at low water mark. One bach owner counted more than 200 tractor movements in a day. The tractors often start in the early hours and go until 5pm or 6pm, she says.

The constant noise and diesel fumes make it unpleasant, if not impossible, to sit outside, chat and enjoy the view, she says.

"They say it is only for the summer; in winter, it is quiet. But, as residents who pay big rates to live on the foreshore, don't we have the right to sit on our deck and enjoy it too?"

The residents worry that the machines are leaking oil and diesel into the marine environment as they cross the sand. They point to the telltale oil leaks where the tractors park near the boat ramp.

"Marahau has become the last resting place for any old tractor," Mr Simes says.

"It's a green facade they [the operators] put up. But the green veneer is wearing off quite quickly."

Operators have acted to quieten the tractors after a petition instigated by the residents' and ratepayers' association in 2005, and the New Zealand Transport Authority has worked with them to improve safety standards.

Still, whatever improvements have been made, people in the community spoken to for this article have various complaints about tractors: the noise, the numbers, pollution, congestion, the vehicles being parked up for long periods, sometimes with marine radios blaring.

"They should be operating with consideration of everyone around them and if they'd done that, then people would be more tolerant," Mrs Franklin says.

But at busy times, tolerance is in short supply. The boat ramp can be a source of cheap entertainment for passers-by during peak times, when tempers can flare among those vying to use it, including scrapping between commercial operators and recreational boaties.

The wider tension has damaged relationships in the small community, and those who speak out against the operators admit that they are not popular.

"It's all over the fact they don't like you having a say. You should just put up with it, because they [the operators] are making money for the community," Mrs Franklin says.

"I'm like dog s... on your boots around here," Mr Simes says. "They attack you personally."

Mr Simes says tourism and the community can co-exist. He visited Lord Howe Island, off Queensland, which he says was a good example of how tourism is actively managed and the experience of both the community and visitors is enhanced.

"I don't see the activity as a bad thing. It's just that it could be being done a damn sight better."

Their ideal solution would be for the operators to establish a new gateway-base for the park further up the coast at Tinline Bay although that idea, which would require massive earthworks and millions of dollars to develop access along what is now a paper road, looks like an impossible dream.

Their complaints inevitably lead to the Tasman District Council and what they see as its unwillingness to step in and make the hard decisions, and its apparent preparedness to turn a blind eye when the rules haven't been followed.

Examples include businesses operating without the necessary consents (and from a residential property, in one instance); the council being aware of such a case since 2002, but not holding the retrospective resource consent hearing until this year; and breaches in the consents granted for the work around filling in holes on the beach left by tractors.

The council's acting environment and planning manager, Rob Smith, dismisses claims that the council is turning its back on the community.

He says the council is dealing with growth throughout the district.

A Marahau to Kina strategic review is No 37 out of 38 works on its list of "priority one" planning projects, and an initial scoping plan is scheduled for next year.

`Oh, we know who you've been talking to," says Abel Tasman Independent Guides Sea Kayaking owner William "Mitch" Mitchell, when we encounter him on the Marahau sandspit.

"It's always the same six or so people who complain."

Mr Mitchell has worked in Marahau for 14 seasons, living there for nine of those, and says those "six or so people" don't speak for the community.

The "real Marahau" the vast majority of the 500 residents is much more accommodating of tourist operators, he says.

Mr Mitchell defends the system of ferrying passengers from the settlement, down the beachfront, across the beach and to the launch zone as the only viable way to operate, saying there are plenty of examples of similar activity around New Zealand.

If the operators were banned from driving on the beach, meaning they would be limited to launching only at high tide, the tourism industry in Marahau would die, he warns.

Nelson Tasman Tourism chief executive Paul Davis also says the complaints of a few disaffected residents need to be looked at "objectively".

He says tourism is Marahau's main industry, employing more than 100 people in 12 to 15 businesses in the peak summer season. Some tourism workers live in Marahau, owning homes and paying rates; others rent houses and holiday homes, which helps the owners pay their rates.

Nevertheless, the strong growth in tourism at Marahau has troubled some in the industry. Darryl Wilson, whose family has run an Abel Tasman guiding business for generations, no longer operates out of Marahau, in part because of the problems there.

He says Marahau's tourism operators need to take responsibility for the effects of their business and collectively change things, although he acknowledges that competition is behind some of the problems. He says getting a community shuttle to pick up and drop off clients from their accommodation could be an answer, or moving to a situation where visitors would be prepared to walk to the launching points.

Much of it, he says, comes down to marketing. "It would send a message that we care enough about our place to encourage you to walk."

A central hubbing point near the boat ramp would also reduce the tractor movements.

Mr Mitchell, too, accepts that the growth in tourism activity has outstripped the area's infrastructure. There is no land for a central hub for operators and not enough parking.

"It's the most heavily used national park in New Zealand and DOC [the Department of Conservation] has only got a tiny kiosk at the start of it."

The residents have an ally in New Zealand recreational fishing council president Geoff Rowling. He sees fault lying with the district council and its handling of planning issues.

"It's the mammoth growth of tourism and commercial growth of the beach front, and the impact that is having on the local community and the potentially disastrous impact it has on the marine environment. I don't think that's acceptable. There are solutions that should be put in place.

"If you get to Christmas and nothing has changed, we might have to create some other form of protest, because it's the only way to get things done in this society."

A spokeswoman for the biggest force in kayak tourism in the area, a Ngai Tahu-Wakatu Incorporation joint venture, suggests that much of the controversy at Marahau is growing pains. Lori Keller, acting Nelson Marlborough general manager for the Ngai Tahu Tourism Group, compares it to the experience at Milford and Te Anau, which was resolved amicably.

"It isn't a unique situation here. It's happening all across the country, all across the world," she says, adding that with a peak season of about 12 weeks, by international standards it is a relatively quiet national park.

She rejects the view that operators are trying to work outside consents and laws.

"I would suggest that we are doing everything that's asked from us."

While she says the dialogue between operators and residents has not been as good as could be, she hopes that will change. "We certainly are wanting to create a great environment for the locals as well as the clients."

For some, it's too late.

"It's a sad state of affairs because people come here and say `What a beautiful place'," Mr Gorrie says. "And I say, 'Well, if only you knew what Marahau was like'."

- © Fairfax NZ News