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Roger Rabbits with |
I beat sun-up by a couple of hours and wandered into town for a gaze, because that’s the kind of wonderfully crazy thing maladjusted old men like to do.
Gloomy, cold, absurdly early on King’s Birthday Monday. “Happy Birthday Chuck!” Wonder if he went out “on the chop” to celebrate?
Apparently HRH likes a Laphroaig or a Martini – not really a pint of bitter and pork scratchings kind of guy.
Anyhow I was standing in Harington St staring up into the black beyond when a lady stopped to ask if I was alright. How rude! She’s walking a dog in the middle of the night and I’m the one who’s nuts?
I explain I’m admiring the tower cranes that pierce the city skyline. Even though it’s just gone 6.30am and not one wisp of daylight. “Of course you are dear…” Condescending old moo.
Rickety Meccano
I invite her on my ‘Way Forward Tour’ – to revel in the vibes from the downtown construction sites. To see what’s up, and what’s going up. The CBD is sprouting in all directions.
She just huffed and shuffled off into the darkness.
Anyhow I love those tower cranes – rickety Meccano-like monoliths that don’t look physically up for the job they’re expected to do. The giants of construction – all jib, hooks, pulleys, leverage and counterweights – lifting, lowering and shifting stuff. Doing the job of 1000 men in minutes. It took 27 years to build the Great Pyramid of Giza. A Watts & Hughes Construction crane could have knocked that puppy out in a few months and gone waterskiing on the Nile.
I am also curious? How does the crane keep soaring higher than the building it’s working on? Does the operator take his sarnies up with him in the morning? Or does he just hoist them when the hooter goes off? What’s the drill when he needs a pee? Can he afford to have a bad day at the office?
Gob on a finger
At night or during high winds, the cranes are left in “free slew”, allowing the boom to circle freely through 360 degrees like a giant weathervane. The boom always points downwind, the direction of the wind. Or you could just gob or spit on your finger and hold it up – whichever side is coldest and dries fastest is the direction of the wind. Way cheaper than a tower crane weathervane. But both work.
My ‘Way Forward Tour’ started on the fringe of the CBD near the domain and perhaps the sharpest building on Cameron Rd. A big sign screams ‘BLOOD’. Not the legend of the blood-sucking vampires of Transylvania playing out but the blood service phlebotomists doing their noble work.
Don’t drive past – stop and admire their building. Quite special. Pop in even. They will find a vein to download blood equivalent to 1.5 cans of soft drink. And save a life perhaps. I once knew a team of phlebotomist netballers who went off to a weekend tournament and came home with wee vampires tattooed on their butts. They’re committed. Cute.
A bit of Boston
The ‘Way Forward Tour’ continues down Harington St where they’re busy turning a sow’s ear into an accoutrement on a site sold for just one dollar. I might have put in a bid had I known that. The transport hub is being refashioned into $60m worth of carparking and office spaces.
The recently finished Northern Quarter spanning across Harington and Hamilton streets would sit comfortably in the Red City, Boston, famous for its classical red brick buildings. A dockside aesthetic they described it as. See it from Harington St, and tell me it isn’t a work of art, that it isn’t cool. A crane is sneaks above the hoardings right next door – a matching 200-room four-star hotel.
There’s Craig’s new digs at 2 Devonport Rd – everything that could go wrong did go wrong on this site. But great things are born of difficulty. It’s a show-piece sentinel right at the foot of Devonport Rd.
This is why I love those cranes. They’re visible signs of a city evolving, soaring symbols of progress, renewal, revitalisation, of economic growth. They tell me that down below, way, way below, is another investment in infrastructure, in our future. A city is on the march.
Cocking a snook
And it’s like those three tower cranes on our skyline are cocking a snook at the naysayers, the citizens against everything who insisted Te Manawataki o Te Papa – the heartbeat of Te Papa – would not and should not happen.
“This is just bull***”, “fluffy want to haves” they said of the library and community hub, the museum and exhibition gallery. But these cultural ‘must haves’ are institutions that identify cities, are the heart of communities, and they’re bursting out. Gaze down Willow St and soak it up. A stunning architectural statement, a mass-timber design oozing local cultural narratives, the story of who we are and where we have come from. Te Manawataki o Te Papa – the heartbeat of Te Papa. Heartbeat? It’s bursting out of its chest, it’s pumping. Christchurch has a sports arena with a lid, Auckland a flash new underground rail corridor. And we’re on the brink of having something very, very special and stimulating of our own.