DUNEDIN SUPERMARKET TROLLEY TURNS UP IN HEATHCOTE RIVER, 360KM FROM HOME

A Woolworths trolley bearing the wheel-clamp stickers of a Dunedin store has been pulled from the Heathcote River at St Martins, roughly 360 kilometres north of where anyone last paid for it to hold groceries.

The trolley was spotted on Tuesday morning by Lorraine Petrie, 71, who walks the riverbank most days and says she knows every abandoned object between Wilsons Road and the Opawa footbridge by sight. "Saw the branding and thought, that's not one of ours. Ours are New World. This thing's come a long way to get stuck in the mud with the ducks." She added the coin slot had been jammed with a two-dollar coin "from about 1995".

In 1974 a trolley stayed where you left it, or at worst made it to the car park boundary before a boy in a brown apron fetched it back. This one has crossed the Waitaki, passed Timaru without stopping, and somehow avoided every cone between Rolleston and the Port Hills, which is more than most cars manage.

A second resident, Dougal Tranter, said he'd seen it two days earlier on Centaurus Road, upright and unattended, sitting in the new cycle lane. "Bloody thing was using it properly, which is more than the Audis do. Had a road cone in the basket. Reckon it picked that up locally."

A Woolworths spokesperson said the company "takes trolley retrieval seriously" and that the trolley remained "within its national catchment". Asked whether Christchurch was within a Dunedin store's catchment, the spokesperson said the network was "one connected whānau of stores" and that a retrieval contractor would be "in touch". Christchurch City Council confirmed the river was theirs but the trolley was not, and asked this reporter to stop ringing.

The trolley was hauled onto the bank Tuesday afternoon and left beside the path pending collection. By Wednesday morning it had moved eleven metres downstream. The cone was gone.