DASHING ROCKS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXIII, 9 April 1926, Page 7

DASHING ROCKS.

YIELDING TO WAVE-STROKES. Heavy seas during the last few years have battered the Dashing Rocks unmercifully. The former straightness of the solid rock face is now considerably marred by indentions at the northern end, where the shocks of waves have caused the creviced rock to fall. There are two large and two or more smaller gaps in the face, and recently a good many large pieces of rock have been shaken off the northern end of the bare section and have been heaped together, inshore of where they were dislodged. One of the larger gaps is near the north end, and the original angle appears to be in danger of being knocked down. The other large gap began in a peculiar way. In the old days, when a shingle beach lay at the foot of the rocks, a blow-hole — three or four loot in diameter —existed, with a small tunnel open to the sea, beneath a bridge of rock in line witli that on either side. After the shingle had gone away the seas ran more strongly into the tunnel, and soon disclosed that the “bridge” was narrow, and that inshore of it was a large hollow in the lava rock, filled with clay. The waves washed out the clay, threw down the. bridge, and began to widen its abutments. The clay-filled hole was peculiar in that it had two or three horizontal extensions all round into the rock, also I full of clay. The original clay hole has been much enlarged to at least twice its early width, yet these extensions still continue. There ore two or three small shifts of rock further south, but the striking damage is near the north end. Recent seas have shifted the north end of Waimataitai beach some little distance landward, and by doing so have exposed some square yards of the old lagoon bottom, on the seaward side of the ridge of beach. There is a lower slope of sand between the muddy soil and the breakers. The shifting of the beach has also again exposed a fragment of the framing of the little iron steamer William Miskin, which was wrecked near the north end of this beach in 18G8, at the time of the record flood.