Dion Norton has an unbreakable bond with Mount Maunganui beach. 'My beach” says the territorial 40-year-old husband, professional painter, but first and foremost a surfer.

Dion Norton has an unbreakable bond with Mount Maunganui beach.

'I even got married on this sand.”

So when the MV Rena ploughed into Astrolabe Reef on October 5, three years ago today, spewing its bunker oil onto Mount Maunganui beach, he felt personally aggrieved.

Dion's image filled the front page of The Weekend Sun on October 14, 2011, with ‘In the wake of the wreck' screamed the headline.

Dion's back on the front page of The Weekend Sun this week, this anniversary, at the same place, on the same beach almost three years to the day later.

'I was devastated,” recalls Dion this week.

Dion was painting in C3 – a cargo shed at the Port of Tauranga – when he learned of New Zealand's biggest marine environmental disaster.

He could live with the grounding but when oil started fouling his playground a few days later, he put the lid back on his pot of paint and headed for the beach.

He almost cried. 'The beach was covered in ugly black clumps, right along the waterline, as far as you can see. And it was littered with dead birds. So I just got on with it, started cleaning up right there and then.”

Dion spent four or five hours that day piling up the pollution, cleansing his little patch of paradise. And he carried on day after day until the official clean-up began.

'I wanted to fix my beautiful beach, because it looked hideous. And I felt so proud when lots of others joined the effort.”

Months later he was still picking spots of oil from his surf board.

But this week, back at the very same spot on Mount Maunganui beach, Dion digs his hand into the white sand, his sand. He slowly sieves it though his fingers and beams.

'It's lovely again – back to its original state.”

For this surfer and self-appointed spiritual guardian of Mount Maunganui beach, the Rena is a distant bad dream.

He grabs his board, scans the beach and wanders towards a 'much bigger surf” where the grown-ups play.