Essential journeys only

Another cyclonic night brought another morning of grey skies. The radio talked of much flooding given all the rainfall and that only essential journeys should be taken. High tide was due at 11:20 so we made for the point at Whakatane. 'The Heads' as its rightfully known is where a river mouth meets the sea, aka a harbour, if the

surrounding local area had expanded enough to warrant one. As we drove across town we couldn't believe the amount of flooding. The river had burst it's banks in places and had roughly doubled in size. The

mooring area was now filled with brown fast flowing water and tonnes of land debris mainly drift wood.

What with king tides, the sheer power of nature, Cyclones Vania and Zelia now doing their best to cause mayhem, the Coast Guard Station looked favorite. Based right at the point of the heads. With the
bar closed, the bar being the point at where the sea currents actually meet the river swell, not where you get a pint of heavy, resident coast guards Dan & Bevin had some spare time on their hands. As we entered the main control room the kettle had just boiled. We didn't have to be asked twice we were in there like a shot. Timing, like I said you can't beat it. The next hour or so we had a grandstand panoramic view of the chaos unfolding along with running commentary from this coast guard duo.

From these two the general gist of it was that the golden weather run of late that had been giving us sun seekers a good run of temperatures in the mid to late 20s was set to be turned upside down for a couple of days by twin cyclones Vania and Zelia. Of these two low pressure systems, Zelia was likely to have more energy, wind and rain. These two beauties where expected to bring strong downpours in the region and that's exactly what they did. Good old NZ Met Office !! A genius display of predictions.

But Bevin informed us that there was good news in all this - the system would drop rain over thirsty farms in both islands and because of the fast movement of these weather fronts it should clear the country by Tuesday, so no worries. Temperatures should then bounce back to 25c.

We were getting far too comfortable in Don and Bevin's hide out so we thanked them for the coffees and bid them farewell. It was onto Rotorua.