Jennifer Eder16:50, Jul 19 2021
MDC
A high country community isolated by landslides after severe rain are facing a mammoth cleanup.
A series of slips along Awatere Valley Rd in south Marlborough have cut off access to several farms in the high country valley. The top end at Molesworth Station is closed for the winter.
Mount Gladstone farmer Hayley Pitts is stuck on one of those farms, about 50 kilometres southwest of Seddon, where the severe rain at the weekend has flooded her merino and cattle farm with silt and debris.
“The rain really started on Friday night – we went from the big high of being in town for the Groundswell protest, and feeling really proud to be a Kiwi farmer, and then we had all that heavy rain that night, it was so loud we got up in the night and the river was just massive,” Pitts said.