'Waterfall' appears on farm amid devastation of Cyclone Gabrielle

Thursday, 9 March 2023

While the rain has ravaged parts of their farm, the waterfall is a small oasis in the devastation, Maddren said.

The clouds that washed away swathes of their farm over recent months were not all bad for Karyn Maddren and Sue Meszaros, who now have a new waterfall on their north Auckland farm.

The heavy rains – including those of Cyclone Gabrielle – scarred their Warkworth farm with deep fissures and landslides, leaving large parts of their land unusable for their sheep.

But among the devastation, a huge landslip has revealed a sandstone channel that has a steady stream of water running along it – creating a cascading waterfall in the middle of their pasture.

Speaking on a very patchy line from their Kaipara Hills farm, Maddren said the waterfall was a blessing amid the hardship.

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“Looking one way beautiful, but turn around and you’re confronted with the ugliness of what actually happened,” Maddren said.

Karyn Maddren checks water running down a layered rock waterfall unearthed by a huge landslide on her farm.

The water, she said, seemed to be pouring out of the sodden earth at the top of a hill.

The slip had poured tonnes of dirt down the hillside, covering a block of native bush in silt and mud, she said.

Some of the fissures that opened up on the farm were metres deep and essentially meant parts of the farm would have to be retired.

Waka Kotahi drone video shows the havoc Cyclone Gabrielle inflicted on SH1 at Brynderwyn Hills, south of Whangārei. (This video has no sound. First published February 28.)

But Maddren was philosophical about their predicament.

“It’s nature,” she said.

“This is what land does, it moves all the time.”

They lost about 10 hectares of their 68-hectare farm to slips and fissures – some metres deep – but thankfully, Maddren said, none of their stock.

Maddren, left, and Sue Meszaros have decided to retire the land they say is too unsafe to farm.

They think the best thing to do with the pasture that can’t be saved would be to plant up the land to stop further landslides.

“At the end of the day there’s so much damage and you can't deal with it all at once, so we’ve had to box it up and compartmentalise it all to deal with at a different time.”

The north of the country has received staggering amounts of rain over the past three months, with most centres recording their wettest summer ever.

Auckland received over 5.5 times its normal summer rainfall and 63% of its average annual rainfall.

Meanwhile, Whangārei recorded over 77% of its annual normal rainfall during summer.

MetService said Cyclone Gabrielle was officially “one of the worst storms” to hit Aotearoa in living memory.