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...
Sketching around Napier at Christmaswas a lot of fun, there is always so
much to draw in 'The Bay'.
A visit to the MTG (Hawkes Bay
Museum) to see the Speedlines and
Ziggurates: Deco House Style
photography exhibition inspired
us to look a bit closer at the
deco suburb of Marewa, the
source of the top two sketches
here. There are streets and
streets of these houses in Marewa.
Next is Louis Hays office in
Herschell Street. This where
he designed many of Napier's
prominent Art Deco and Mission
Revival buildings after the devastating
1931 earthquake. If you've been
to Napier you'll recognise some
of the buldings he designed listed here.
And lastly, at the bottom, and not fitting
in at all with all these deco buildings –
a Victorian villa – not everything was
destroyed in the earthquake and you'll
still find plenty of these dotted around
the Napier hills.
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