The washout summer: Auckland's Coromandel playground faces tough decisions

Friday, 24 February 2023

There are about 4000 permanent residents in Whangamata, but the town swells over summer. It’s now become the first port of call for people travelling to their homes on the Coromandel, after a slip on State Highway 25a cut direct access to Tairua, Whitianga and beyond.

The Coromandel has long been the summer playground of Aucklanders, but as slips cut access and with nothing standing between beach front homes but seawalls, eroded dunes, and makeshift barriers, it’s facing difficult questions. Kelly Dennett reports.

When Cyclone Gabrielle sideswiped the Coromandel Peninsula, Stephen Hosken was unsurprised his waterfront Cooks Beach bach, valued at more than $2m, bore out the storm – even as other properties suffered several feet of water damage.

“It performed magnificently,” he says. “If we didn’t have the wall I would suggest a good number of the 26 houses would no longer be there.”

Hosken is referring to an 8-year-old, $750,000 seawall erected by 26 Captain Cook Rd properties after several years of back and forth, planning and consenting, with Thames Coromandel District Council (TCDC), which saw the creation of a company, Cooks Beach Wall Ltd, of which each property owner is a shareholder.

This 8-year-old, $750,000 seawall was erected by 26 Captain Cook Rd properties.

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The Cooks Beach seawall was built after properties were smashed by repeated bad weather.

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The Thames-Coromandel District has taken a real hammering, mayor Len Salt told Stuff on Tuesday.

In real estate advertising properties on this road – one a few doors down from Hosken is listed at $3.7m – the wall is a selling point for potential waterfront buyers who can no longer look away from the effects of climate change.

The wall was built after properties on that Cooks Beach coastline were, not unlike this summer, smashed time and again by shocking weather.

“When Cyclone Bola [in 1988] went through it totally destroyed that portion of the beach,” explains Hosken. “And after Bola a number of residents built a big timber wall which lasted a number of years, but in 2013 there was a series of storms, not of the Bola magnitude but still severe enough, and it damaged and undermined the timber wall.”

As Hosken tells it, residents were by then vesting their hopes in “ad hoc structures” in futile attempts to defend their properties from the sea. The proposal, in conversation with council, was one long wall, half on private property, and half on council reserve. When it was finished in 2015 engineers warned that in severe weather there could still be overtopping.

“And indeed the one that just happened, Gabrielle, that was obviously the worst one to date. A lot of seawater came over the top. Other than a few garages flooded there has been no damage I’m aware of.”

But Cyclone Gabrielle – and torrential rain in the weekends before it – hasn’t just brought down sand dunes, slips, and a barrel of seawater into homes.

The Mercury Bay Boating Club in Whitianga sacrifices its deck after it was undermined by Cyclone Hale.

It’s prompted serious conversations about coastal inundation, defence systems, and bitterly for some, managed retreat. It’s also brought into sharp effect what happens when well-worn roads are no longer useable; when a place that seemed so close is suddenly cut off.

The Coromandel Peninsula has long been a unique coastal playground for primarily Aucklanders but also Waikato and Bay of Plenty residents who have made the most of its proximity and golden beaches.

A jewel in New Zealand’s crown, as the mayor puts it, Thames Coromandel is home to some 32,000 permanent residents, but swells significantly with domestic and international tourists in the hotter months – as many as 110,000 in peak summer, and 70,000 at weekends.

Property is sought-after because of its scarcity.

The area has the worst housing affordability in the country. Its average house costs $1.1m, 13% higher than the national average. But they’re largely being bought by out-of-towners with deep pockets - nearly half aren’t occupied.

Local real estate agents and other experts Stuff talked to were reluctant to suggest it could be the end of days for modest bachs fetching millions of dollars. But if you ask Stephen Hosken, he’s philosophical.

Thirty years ago Cooks Beach had a “gentle dune” dropping from his lawn down to the beach. But 15 years ago it was apparent things were changing. Nonetheless, 18 months ago, “Those properties were selling like hot cakes and appreciating like no tomorrow.”

Now? “You’d be exceptionally naive to think your property hasn’t gone down in value. Of course it has.

At the SH25A slip site on the Coromandel Peninsula.

“But people have short memories. If we have some lovely summers, Cooks Beach is a wonderful venue, ideal for grandchildren – they’ll still sell. There’s no more beach front properties to be had. The fact that every now and again Mother Nature throws a storm at you, that’s part of the price.

“There are idiots on Twitter saying, ‘rich pricks, they live on the water and they have these fancy views, what do they expect, they shouldn’t have bought there.’ My neighbour has been there since the 60s, it’s a family bach they had had for 63 years… A lot of these homes are not [owned by] rich pricks, they probably built it for $20,000 60 years ago.”

A slip closed popular Coromandel tourism spot Cathedral Cove.

CoreLogic’s chief property economist Kelvin Davidson says uncertainty is the key word when it comes to projections around what will happen with property on the coast. One “rough precedent” was the Christchurch rebuild, he says, when house prices rose as supply dropped, but then flattened once the rebuild began.

“In reality, I think the bigger questions are around the long-term issues. Could this be the event that finally makes us seriously question where we build and what we build? It’s not 100% clear, as this has been discussed before, and arguably not a lot has changed.

“That said, if anything’s going to change the mindset, it could be this event, and you’d certainly have to assume that fewer buyers will be willing to look at coastal properties, at least for a little while, and/or will only be willing to pay less than before.”

The answer may lie in what happens with insurance, he says.

“If risk-based pricing drives up premiums in certain locations, theoretically this will result in lower house prices than otherwise would have been the case.”

Stephen Hosken isn’t worried about his property – he fears more about wider infrastructure within Coromandel’s towns, and says more should be done to defend them. He’s not alone in that, with the fix of State Highway 25A the hardest and most urgent pill to swallow.

Phil and Natalie Keogh, owner and operators of Craft Haus, Whangamatā.

Following January’s deluge of rain SH25A between Kopu and Hikuai - a main route to Whangamatā, Whitianga and beyond - was closed due to, essentially, a total road collapse that saw bitumen, dirt and debris fall for days afterwards. The fix is not easy, nor will it be quick.

Alternative routes, including SH25 through Thames to the top of the peninsula, were also at times closed due to bad weather, with residents forced to pin their travel hopes on SH2. But when that closed between Paeroa and Waihi during the cyclone, because of a swollen Karangahake Gorge, the last remaining route was severed. (It’s since reopened and remains the main alternative route to the peninsula, which takes drivers through Whangamatā.)

Closures aside, bad weather and confusion and fear about whether the peninsula is open and safe enough has driven both longtime holidaymakers and tourists away. Slips haven’t just affected the roads - popular beauty spot Cathedral Cove had to close when yet another slip tumbled down onto the beach.

Figures from the local tourism board show in January, when summer should have been in full swing, electronic card transactions in Hauraki Coromandel tumbled 30%, representing about $22m in spending. That’s unsurprising when you consider daily domestic visitors were down by nearly 300,000 across the whole month. They’re not expecting February to look much different.

For Whangamatā pub owner Phil Keogh, who set up Craft Haus about a year ago, now that the village has become the main trunk line, a gateway to the rest of the peninsula, he’s noticed diners passing through stopping in on Friday night. But that was just a small ray of sunshine in what has otherwise been a “tough” summer.

It hadn’t started out that way. Christmas brought fine weather, with a few scorching days until the first week of January. “The town was pumping, it was overflowing, it felt like it was back to normal [after the Covid-19 pandemic],” he says.

Thames Mayor Len Salt moved to Thames from Whitianga in November.

Then the rain set in.

“People just went home. It was essentially a thunderstorm that lasted a week. Then we had more rain. Then [SH25A] subsided. It has been a long, wet, tough summer for not just hospo, but friends who own the local surf school. This is when they make their money. It’s been a disaster for them. Or the campground at Opoutere. They’re struggling to survive now…it’s going to be a long winter.”

Keogh points out it’s not just confusion or hesitation about making the new, longer and at times bumpy drive out via the new route – having seen the peninsula be cut off during the worst of the storms, people are nervous about not being able to leave again.

“Another 20 minutes, half an hour of travel time is not that big a deal [but] I think what has turned people off is, ‘what if we get stuck there?’ People have jobs, they might be medically dependent – I think that’s more of a worry for people.”

The peninsula has an ageing population, with 35% over 65, and travel to Thames and beyond for healthcare is a priority for some. But local councillor and Auckland barrister Gary Gotlieb points out that many local workers and schoolchildren travel over the hill as well.

Gotlieb has a bach in Whangamatā at one of its prime property locations – he’s driving there when Stuff calls. He’d been sent photos and videos of the bedraggled and sharpened dunes after the storms, and says problems for beachfront property owners go back 80 years when homes were inexplicably built on dunes.

“We’ve got a lot of thinking to do,” he says. “Some properties that I’ve seen photographs of – not just in Whangamatā – their future is very, very unlikely.” Like Davidson, he thought insurers could be the decider.

He believes some property owners have been concerned for years, while others are realising their desire to be close to the water is now putting them in Mother Nature’s path. Others, he says frankly, “have got enough money to ride it out”.

“Your heart goes out to people who have committed themselves, put their equity in, and they may not be able to continue living there. Probably leaving them a huge debt.”

This week a series of meetings were held between locals and councillors, including the mayor and deputy mayor, and spearheaded by a concerned local business community. Mayor Len Salt moved to Thames from Whitianga, where he and his wife had been for 13 years, in November for better ease of travel for his new role, and admits now the timing was fortuitous.

“If we had still been living in Whitianga, trying to manage these events through the last six weeks or so it would have been extremely challenging.”

Businesses are craving certainty, he says, which is near impossible to give in terms of the weather, and with 400 km of coastline and hundreds of slips, contractors are working overtime to stay on top of them.

Salt says this summer, one which “started and died” after Covid, and included seven weeks of consistent storm events, has been a wake-up call for residents and while the council is reassuring visitors they were open for business – and welcomes them – in the background hard conversations are being had.

“This comment was made not long ago to me by some local people affected by shoreline erosion: we thought we had more time,” says Salt. “So there’s now a realisation that things are happening faster, and with more intensity than we expected, than everyone expected. In reality, discussion around climate change has been going on for decades, and if you listen to [Climate Change Minister] James Shaw, who says he’s heartbroken over the lost decades, I’m with him.”

On Friday Waka Kotahi said SH25A had a year-long fix ahead of it, with three options: build a bridge, build a deviation which bypasses the site, or build a retaining wall and rebuild the road from the ground up. Feasibility is still being assessed.

Meanwhile, it still had 24 slips and 31 overslip sites to clear on the main highways to the peninsula. There was the potential for further slips, as further wet weather threatened the weekend.

Says Salt: “We’ve reached the stage with climate change with the increasing severity and frequency of events where we as a district and as a country have to have a serious conversation about this… The days of fix-up, patch-up after a weather event have gone.

“Unless the Government and the country is prepared to invest significant amounts of money into long-term, sustainable roading resilience, then our district is going to struggle in terms of our social and economic wellbeing into the future.”