By Leanne Malcolm
The residents of the little Southland town of Kingston, on the southern shores of Lake Wakatipu, have just emerged from a three-day battering that left them completely cut off.
The three-day onslaught buried just about everything in Kingston.
Locals say they have never seen anything like it, and with no sign of official help the home town of the Kingston Flyer is helping itself.
Those who could get to work were stymied by huge mounds of snow.
“Meant to be doing a brake test… it’s just too dangerous with the snow behind me. It’s just crazy,” says John Butler, from Kingston Automotive.
One Kingston farmer was lucky enough to get his hands on a snow mobile but even that seemed to struggle, until he got the hang of it.
Peter Ottley owns a tractor, and was keen to get the town moving again.
“It’s been a big clean up job. We're starting to go round the houses of the elderly and just help them out and clean up their paths and stuff like that. Yeah it’s pretty big.”
Basic supplies were running low in Kingston but residents say they knew the snow was coming and stockpiled.
It was big news when the Kingston Flyer was sold last week, but this is much bigger. They will be talking about the little town's big snow of 2011 for years to come.
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