Onwards and upwards: saving a city attraction
DON’T panic! Crowing by the Welsh that they have the world’s steepest street is as dodgy as their claim that they beat the All Blacks in 1905.
But even if Baldwin St loses the battle, Dunedin can still claim the steepest street title. It is only because I am a coopted member of the Dunedin City Council Plan B Group (PBG) that I can tell you this. PBG works below the radar and, so secret is our operation, that our meetings are held in the crypt at St Paul’s Cathedral where, so far, we have enjoyed complete privacy.
The Mayor is our chairman and kindly attends the odd meeting if he happens to be in the city. Our budget is not made public but is hidden in the DCC accounts. So, now you know. The $162,280 on ‘‘catering’’, $31,634 on ‘‘gifts’’ and $4753 on ‘‘entertainment’’ the DCC spent last year has actually been used to support the vital work of the Plan B Group.
Our job is to prepare an alternative strategy to counter any disaster which faces the city. Thus, even before the Yanks decided to pull the plug on Cadbury’s, we were bombarding the health mandarins with glossy brochures extolling the virtues of the Cadbury’s land as a hospital site.
Even now we are preparing plans for New Zealand’s Finest Civic Recreational Lake should South Dunedin be submerged by the Pacific Ocean. We have already signed up a 100year deal with the albatrosses to retain their base at Taiaroa Head.
It’s all about thinking ahead and being ready to counter any negative contingency. But it can get pretty nasty. On the drawing board is a plan to assassinate the chief executive of any organisation which moves its Dunedin operation north. Obviously, this is not a job for the fainthearted, which is why the Welsh steepest street threat passes by me as the idle wind, which I respect not. (We work a lot of Shakespeare into our reports as it impresses the bureaucrats, most of whom did only accountancy or law).
The steepest street plan is ultratop secret so pass it on only to those you can trust or to people who forget things, like Cabinet ministers. The plan is to replace Baldwin St, should it be knocked from its perch, by Falcon St in Roslyn. The Welsh street challenging Baldwin St claims a 38% slope but we are fairly sure the steepest part of Falcon St would beat that.
Until we do the measurements, the PBG are basing their case on my own evidence as an exresident of Falcon St. Taking the dog up to Highgate was once my daily task and the middle segment of Falcon St where the steps are and which also offers a Captain Scott plaque is believed to be the only place in the world where a normally fit, intelligent dog will refuse to go walkies because it’s too steep. Even the plaque was ignored by the dog. Perhaps he knew that a swag of huskies had been led to their doom on Scott’s journey. So steep is Falcon St that when the Roslyn and Kaikorai Cable Car Company started running a cable car down it in the early 1900s (when it was called James St) they were told to stop before they killed someone. That’s why they built a gentle track from Belgrave Crescent to the power plant at Fraser’s Gully in Kaikorai Valley.
Falcon St will need a bit of work. The steps will need to be replaced by a very steep bit of carcarrying roadway and the whole layout may have to be tweaked a bit to give us 39%, but then, what are bulldozers for? Falcon St already has a great advantage over Baldwin St in that you can park very easily on Highgate and stroll down the hill, claiming to have ‘‘walked the steepest street in the world’’ without actually being obliged to take one pace upwards.
Of course, we have planned for the tourist needs at Falcon St. By doing away with the softball diamond and a couple of soccer pitches on Ellis Park in Kaikorai Valley Rd we will have room to park 200 cars and build a dozen toilets.
Now you may think this is some illconsidered, kneejerk reaction to a sudden threat, but I can assure you that that is not the way the Plan B Group works. We’ve known for years that Baldwin St, just like the stadium, is constantly under the threat of losing its place in the sun and the Falcon St scheme was first drawn up in 2013. I was living in Falcon St at the time so was happy to keep the plan under wraps until I sold the house.
Now, looking on from Maniototo, Falcon St as the World’s Steepest Street looks like a very, very good idea.