Otago Daily Times: Queenstown Lakes

Otago Daily Times reporter Marjorie Cook travels South Westland with a team cleaning plastic debris from remote beaches.

It seems inconceivable South Westland's rugged, remote, boulder-piled beaches should be polluted by plastic. But at the foot of most driftwood mountains, there's a drink bottle, a sea-battered fishing float, or a tangle of ropes and nets. Marjorie Cook reports.

A 56-year-old nelson man who badly fractured a leg and injured his head when he fell about 5m in the Gorge River valley during a tramping trip in South Westland is recovering in Dunedin Hospital after a challenging helicopter rescue on Thursday afternoon.

Mountain biking enthusiasts will soon have another Wanaka track at their disposal, this time right in the centre of town.

Favourable progress has been made with attempts to reduce the amount of algae in Wanaka's domestic water supply, following the trial of a filtration plant at the western intake, project manager Ken Gousmett reported this week.