Welcome to Auckland’s original ‘Municipal Destructor’. Everyone, like me, know it as Victoria Park Market – a super popular open air market through the 80's to 2000's – a great place to buy your crystals and tie-dies etc! I've always known that it was originally the city rubbish dump – when the city was waaaay smaller). There is more to the story, of course. It was originally created in reaction to a bubonic plague scare in Sydney. For sanitary reasons it was built to burn Auckland’s rubbish and waste while using the heat generated to provide electricity to power the city. Sounds pretty clever eh, and I guess we were plague free. However, we must have been breathing some seriously toxic smoke fumes! That 38 metre tall chimney must have helped a little but don't forget all the horse manure and night carts, they were definitely smellier times. The municipal destructor is now a gentrified place that's home to restaurants and businesses, like the superb Milenta restau...
This Impressive 7 metre tall Christian Nicolson figure (titled; 'In Search of Barebottomland') casts a surreal figure along the Fort Takapuna ridgeline during NZ Sculpture Onshore. Here he stares nonchalantly out to the islands of Rangitoto, Rakino and as far as the Coromandel peninsula.
The exhibition featured 89 works by sculptors many of them perched dramatically along the ridge. The kids were more interested in the works by North Shore primary school students exhibited underground in the old fort tunnels and gun emplacements - something to keep everyone happy.
Works by Dion Hitchens (above) and Charlotte Fisher (bottom). Rangitoto island behind.
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