Whangarei kills reason to visit
EVEN though I love the Far North, as it’s where my ancestors first settled, I can count the number of nights I’ve stayed in Whangarei on the fingers of one hand.
I’ve spent many a delightful night in Tutukaka, Kerikeri, and Cooper’s Beach, but I never seem to have a reason to stay in Northland’s largest city. Though I do remember once being forced to overnight in a 1970s-style booze barn at Onerahi. It wasn’t much fun.
Whangarei was hit hard by Rogernomics in the 1980s and used to compete with Gisborne and Hastings in having the country’s worst unemployment statistics. Fortunately things have improved.
I was greatly impressed when I heard that Whangarei was planning to build a Hundertwasser Arts Centre, based on the plans of the late Austrian architect, artist and long-time Northland resident Friedensreich Hundertwasser. It was to house his works as well as a gallery of Maori art, which he loved. Surely that would get me and a lot of other tourists to visit Whangarei.
Hundertwasser, who famously stated that ‘‘the straight line leads to hell’’, designed the Hundertwasserhaus apartment block in Vienna, which is a major tourist attraction.
He also designed the koru-shaped alternative New Zealand flag and submitted a design for Te Papa. Instead of the current behemoth that looks like a giant concrete Cook Strait ferry, Hundertwasser created an amazing museum complex with grass roofs. Sadly, it fitted in with its natural surroundings rather than fighting against them, so it couldn’t be taken seriously by those in charge.
Hundertwasser’s best-known New Zealand building is the Kawakawa public toilets, for which the locals didn’t have to spend a penny in design fees. Since they have opened, the toilets have attracted many tourists. But even the toilets were difficult to get off the ground. Apparently there were plans to build the toilets with a train theme, as Kawakawa has train tracks on its main street. A district councillor had to make a mad dash to Paihia to cast his vote for the Hundertwasser toilets.
Sadly, last week, the Whangarei District Council voted to remove the Hundertwasser Arts Centre from its long-term plan. The representatives of the Vienna-based Hundertwasser Foundation, who generously offered many of his arts works free of charge, have returned home, probably disgusted and muttering about pearls before schwein.
So the district council that has recently spent $15 million on an events centre and $10m on a gym and athletics complex can’t afford the $6.6m to build the Hundertwasser Arts Centre. Drains and footpaths are far more important.
Apparently central government made sympathetic noises but had no money to directly fund the centre, though a few million dollars of lottery grants money was made available. Could our arts or tourism ministers have lobbied the wavering councillors? Perhaps John Key thinks Northern Districts’ home matches will be enough to bring tourists to the city.
But don’t think such debacles only happen in philistine provincial towns. Some years back, famous Austrian refugee architect Ernst Plishke offered to design a small children’s play centre in a Wellington suburb for free. ‘‘No need,’’ said a local committee member, ‘‘my husband’s a builder, he’ll take care of it.’’
Yet I can also understand the Whangarei councillors who killed the Hundertwasser Arts Centre. Architects can be elitist and demanding and the last type of person with whom ordinary Kiwis wish to engage. There was a particularly difficult Danish bloke called Utzon who was a total nightmare. He caused no end of irritation to Australian public works ministers with his cost overruns and ridiculous ideas about some opera house that had walls that looked like shells.
Meanwhile, as councils around the country talk of the need to focus on ‘‘core business’’, those people who can afford to travel to Vienna or Paris or Sydney can return and talk of the fantastic architecture they’ve seen and loudly wonder why we don’t have it here.
And Whangarei residents can sleep soundly knowing that their rates will not be wasted on some namby-pamby arts centre named after some unknown kraut, and instead have their hardearned money spent on footpaths and drains so straight that they just may lead to hell.