The heavy rain, a month or so ago, did a real number on the valley next to the Matari Forest School.
The damage to the artificial bankside was fairly significant - with boulders and cement being torn away in the floods. Our slide boulder got carried about 20m downstream.
It took the local council a while to organise repairs, but the red and white hazard tape is finally down.
The first thing our forest school kids said as they saw the newly repaired venue was, "Bye Bye Valley".
Within seconds they had spotted that the deep swimming pools had been filled in and levelled off.
Whilst repairs were underway, they had filled the streambed with sand so that construction vehicles could move around. I had hoped that everything would be taken back out...
So, our favourite swimming holes are gone - and... I'm not sure how making the whole section of stream shallower is going to be helpful next time it rains hard.
There are also a few tonnes of extra sand in the stream, left over from construction, which will surely be carried away with the rains to be deposited lower down...
We'll see what happens.
Luckily for us, we do know some good swimming spots higher up the mountain which are inaccessible to cranes and excavators.
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