Cable makes unscheduled appearance

Amazing to think this unassuming cable on the beach at Mangawhai links New Zealand to Oregon, across the entire Pacific Ocean. An early-morning beach walk turned into an unusual discovery for a Mangawhai resident, who came across a thick cable protruding from the sand at the northern end of Mangawhai Beach, just past Bream Tail Stream. “It was dead low tide, and at first I thought it was a rope that had washed up,” she said. “You’d possibly fall over it if you were walking there in the dark.” The exposed section belongs to the Hawaiki Cable, a 15,000km fibre-optic system that connects Australi...