CASTLES IN THE SAND
Raewyn Peart
Craig Potton, $49.99, pbk
New Zealanders, being an island people, have a special relationship with the coast - the foreshore and seabed, if you like - but I sometimes wonder if they've looked very closely at it recently.
Raewyn Peart has and in her passionate, partisan and broad examination of what has happened to our coast, Castles in the Sand, she provides many a sobering reminder that all is not as it was or ought to be.
When I was a boy, the summer camping holiday on a beach somewhere was an experience enjoyed by most working-class families, but they'd be hard-pressed to repeat it these days.
One of the reasons is the march of "progress", which is to say the conversion of many of our most beautiful undeveloped beach frontages into urban landscapes filled with extremely expensive housing, often representing the full range of excess in bad taste.
Vast piles of money have been made from coastal subdivision (and a good chunk of it by the so-called `Tartan mafia' from these parts), so that your coastal bach or crib, what Peart describes as once a "simple dwelling with few creature comforts", is nearing extinction.
Should we care? I suppose it depends on whether you admire Queensland's Gold Coast or not.
Then there's the small matter of erosion, or more particularly the way man's activities have accelerated erosion; the destruction of environmental purity from human pollution; the imposition on natural landscapes of man-made marinas with their consequent deleterious impact on natural life; and the prevention of general access to some parts of the coast by developers whose schemes effectively lock out ordinary mortals without the money to get through the gates.
It's not all bad news, though, and Peart concludes with descriptions of several "inspirational projects" where landowners have incorporated the environmental and social into their financial objectives.
Peart, a lawyer and senior policy analyst for the Environmental Defence Society, also discusses historical and political influences on coastal landscapes.
Her lavishly illustrated text enhances and supports what is a situation report, hence its sub-title: "What's happening to the New Zealand coast?"
It's a question we should all be asking, and demanding answers.
- Bryan James is the Books Editor.
