Church on the move hits a roundabout snag
A historic church being moved to Otago from Southland, and being filmed for the TVNZ series Moving Houses, ran into a hitch at a roundabout near Queenstown last Tuesday night.
The base of the former Lumsden Presbyterian Church was moved by firm King House Removals from Lumsden to Arrowtown on Tuesday.
“It went awesome,” King House Removals owner Warren Willis said.
But there was a hitch at the roundabout on State Highway 6 near Jacks Point, just south of Queenstown.
The signs at the roundabout were supposed to lift out of the ground, but they had seized and wouldn’t come out, Willis said.
“We had to get the trailer out wide to get past...
“Because we couldn’t remove the signs we had to steer past them. That did take three or four minutes.”
Jacks Point resident Emma Hurst said the road had been blocked to northbound traffic, with queues forming back to Hanley’s Point.
“The pilot vehicles had everyone off the roundabout and stopped while they tried to move through,” she said.
An earlier plan to move the church to Rangiora to convert it into a house didn’t go ahead, but the Lumsden congregation sold the 1891 church to a private buyer and it was being moved to a new site in Arrowtown.
The roof of the building was moved earlier, followed by the 10m by 25m base on Tuesday.
It was a larger load than normal, and left Lumsden about 10.30am. It had four pilot vehicles in front and two behind it - twice as many as required, Willis said.
“We’re all in radio communication, and know how many cars are behind, and when we’re able to let them pass safely.”
The aim was to avoid holding up traffic, either behind or coming towards the truck, for any more than 10 minutes, Willis said.
It had to be off the road between 4pm and 7pm, and in the end was off from 3pm. The trip re-started at 7pm and was completed by 9pm.
“We had a perfect run,” Willis said. Police said they couldn’t find any reports of delays at the roundabout.
An NZTA Waka Kotahi spokesperson said he church made its way through the roundabout slowly but didn’t get stuck.