Reopening of SH2: Bailey bridges, boulders, dented rails and mist

State Highway 2 between Napier and Wairoa officially reopened to traffic at 7am on Sunday, more than three months after it was damaged by Cyclone Gabrielle. Reporter Kate Green drove up from Napier to Wairoa via the newly repaired highway.

It's a biting cold morning. Mist rises off the grey sea, catches the sun and casts a golden glow across the horizon. The same light falls on the north faces of the hills to the west, and the road is deserted.

Napier is not yet awake - like most places at 7am on a Sunday. But I am awake and heading north.

State Highway 2 has been closed since Gabrielle. Before now, to get from Napier to Wairoa or vice versa, it was a seven-hour drive the long way around inland, or a flight, sometimes via Auckland or Wellington. And those weren't cheap.

One of the major sticking points has been the Waikare Gorge. While not very wide, the deep chasm is basically unpassable for traffic by any other means except a bridge.

When Cyclone Gabrielle dumped a whole lot of rain onto the region, swelling the rivers and casting slash down them in huge quantities, it put enormous pressure on bridges all up and down the East Coast.

A bailey bridge across Waikare has been in the works since April. Waka Kotahi said continued bad weather meant the ground was too soft to bring in the necessary machinery until then, but once work began, it progressed faster than expected.

That, along with the damage to the section of road known as Devil's Elbow, meant extensive repairs.

But exactly three months after the cyclone, the road is back open - albeit, still heavily lined with road cones, manned by road workers in parts, and with stop-go lights and speed restrictions in place.

At Lake Tutira, mist gathers about the hills and across the water, and it's achingly beautiful. Mangled metal barriers line the road as it winds down onto the flat.

Outside the Tūtira Store, two cars are bonnet to bonnet, and a jump start is in progress. I pull over for a break - and because I'm insatiably nosy.

Another car pulls over at the same time, and I ask where they're headed. Max Bean and his partner have come from Wairoa, and they're driving south to visit the five grandkids. He has not seen them since February, and he tells me he's gone a bit nuts without them.

"I'm gonna squeeze them so hard they're gonna s*** their pants, I suspect," he says with a grin.

He pulls an envelope of photos out of the back seat of the car, and tells me a bit about each of the kids.

Talking over the phone just isn't the same, he says. "Speaker phone. They scream in the background about their injuries and scratches, and I just cry and drink beer."

The road north, down which they'd just come from, is looking good, he says. Hardly anyone on it, either.

"It wasn't very dramatic at all. I was expecting lots of queues, but we got green lights all the way."

The jump start between the two cars isn't working, so Max pulls his car around and gives it a go. It splutters into life on the third try.

Wairoa resident Sheree Spooner is at the wheel, and she tells me the car belongs to her daughter. And it's been there since before the cyclone.

On the Monday, the week of the storm, she met her daughter in Tūtira. When the car wouldn't start for the homeward journey, they took Sheree's back to Wairoa.

But when they tried to return for it later that day, they found they couldn't get past the gorge.

"We came back and the Waikare bridge was already gone. Truckies stopped us and said, 'Nah, you can't get there.' So it's been here since that Monday that Gabrielle hit."

Inside, the car is soaking wet and covered in a fine layer of mould. Spiders have made their homes in the grill and around the wing mirrors, but Sheree says she's planning to drive it home.

She says they had a reassuring glimpse of it, of all places, in the background of the TV news.

"It was so funny, because they did a news report from here and they drove past and we saw it, and we were like, 'The car's still there!'"

Once I'm back on the road, the next piece of excitement comes in the form of the gorge itself.

The bailey bridge, only one lane, joins cleanly with the road on either side, but the remnants of the old bridge sit just to the right, an ugly reminder.

It's a mess of steel wire and concrete, jammed with slash and stones, crumpled like a bit of paper.

The crossing takes only a few seconds, even at such a reduced speed. It all feels a bit anticlimactic, but I didn't bring any party poppers so I stop and take a couple of photos, and carry on.

It's a smooth run the rest of the way to Wairoa, where I grab coffee with recovery manager Benita Tahuri. She tells me the mood of the town has really picked up - and perhaps it's just what residents need.

More than 200 houses are still in limbo, with silt under the floor and moisture levels too damp inside to begin work. About half are not insured, she says, but at least they've been able to get on with the work. The others are stymied, waiting for their insurers to come through.

Being reconnected will be good for morale, she hopes.

But she's grown used to a lesser amount of traffic. "I had to give way on the drive here," she says, in faux disbelief.

Wairoa mayor Craig Little says the road opening up is just another step back towards normality.

At the moment the bridge is only open during daylight, between the hours of 7am and 6pm, with closures at Aropaoanui Road and Waikare Gorge.

But for Sheree and her daughter, and Max and the grandkids, and the rest of the town of Wairoa? For now, that's plenty of time.