The owners of Kinloch Wilderness Retreat fear a slip in Kinloch Rd may bankrupt them.
A 50m section of the road, about 2km from the remote wilderness retreat, washed out on Saturday morning — taking a tourists’ rental SUV with it.
Retreat co-owner Toni Glover said the Chinese tourists were driving to Kinloch to pick up their parents about 8am, when the road was still open.
‘‘They’ve seen water on the road, so they’ve tried to avoid the water by driving on the side of the road, not realising that under the water, it’s completely subsided.
‘‘And they got stuck.’’
Mrs Glover said the lodge hosted the Green Party caucus over the weekend — they had since left — but because one of their guests was arriving late, she was keeping an eye on the road on Friday, and was in contact with the Queenstown Lakes District Council.
‘‘They kept saying, ‘the road is fine’.
‘‘The engineer made the call it would be fine overnight, and they wouldn’t fix it.
‘‘To me, it looked like it would go any time.
‘‘But one of the things that has always happened in the past is at first light, they check the road to make sure it’s safe.
‘‘They didn’t do that.’’
Mrs Glover said she and her husband John first raised concerns about that section of the road at the end of last month, due to visible erosion.
‘‘It needed rock armouring.
‘‘The river was breaking away the banks ... because a groyne dropped out that had been put in years ago.’’
She claimed the council refused to put it back in, ‘‘because it was going to cost too much money’’.
‘‘What would have been, to ratepayers, probably a $10,000 to $15,000 fix is now going to be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to rebuild the road down the hillside.’’
Most guests had managed to get out of Kinloch by yesterday afternoon — some were transferred by boat, using either Dart River Adventures or Queenstown Fishing, while others eventually managed to get a lift back to Queenstown with Info & Track, though even that had been a debacle.
Mrs Glover said she had suggested the Queenstown-based track transport company could travel to one side of the slip, and her team could get guests to the other, then walk them safely around to be taken back to the resort.
That had been agreed to by the council, which was ‘‘paying for the people that were leaving here’’, she said.
However, Info & Track could not get to the meeting point, because the council had, essentially, padlocked the road shut.
‘‘Council was then going to have to send someone up from Queenstown to unlock it, having arranged this whole transfer [yesterday] morning.
‘‘In the end, I got the guests to walk with all their luggage and boxes ... 2km up the road.
‘‘This is the level of incompetence we are dealing with.
‘‘It’s all very well for council to have thoroughly-qualified roading engineers, but ultimately council also needs to have them working with good generalists who actually understand the overall picture and can use common sense to work out what the best-case scenario is.’’
Mrs Glover was also concerned about the implication for the business she and her husband had operated for 24 years, which they had invested $3million of their retirement funds in to.
‘‘And now we’re completely cut off, with this massive mortgage, and I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it could bankrupt us.
‘‘We’re losing around about $10,000 of business every single day now, as a result of what council has done.’’
The lodge was still open and operational, and guests prepared to travel by boat from Glenorchy, provided one was available to transfer them, so the Glovers were also continuing to pay their staff, too.
By yesterday afternoon, they had not yet worked out how to get groceries in and there was ‘‘no timeframe’’ for a fix to the road.
Mrs Glover noted the washout had not been deemed a Civil Defence emergency, which would have triggered emergency funding.
In a statement on social media on Saturday night, the council said the road remained closed and was ‘‘impassable’’.
‘‘Kinloch Rd is vulnerable and a known risk for those in the area, particularly following severe weather.
‘‘Further inspection to understand what work will be required to get the road reopened will occur once the water has receded.
‘‘We are exploring all possible options but due to the significant damage, this will not be a quick fix and the road is likely to remain closed for some time.
‘‘We’ll be providing updates on repairs as soon as possible next week.’’
