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...
Now you're starting to wonder if I'm an absolute petrol head right? Well, you're probably right and the World Rally Championship only comes down the this way every 2 years or so, so why not check it out?
While most of the racing stages are set in picturesque countryside up north and around Raglan, the event is actually based at the Viaduct Events Centre in central Auckland. Check out the website for times, but you can catch the cars as they head in and out each day, get right up close to the mechanics as they work flat out to get crashed cars back in the race. There are even several stages in the Auckland Domain on Sunday, the last day of the event, so you can see some of the action without even venturing 'over the Bombay Hills'.
I captured the Mini Cooper of Dani Sordo (ProDrive - the same team that got an Aston Martin on the podium at Le Mans in the weekend) at lunchtime while the mechanics were hard at work...
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