Olympic Park New Lynn

Olympic Park
by James Littlewood

Here’s what I like about Olympic Park: it’s really good at breaking people out of boxes and helping them be awesome. In the heart of New Lynn, Google Maps puts it on Portage Rd, but that’s a bit deceiving. The double arterial of Wolverton St will take you straight to the heart of the action.

Think you’re too old for New Zealand’s biggest spacenet? Get over yourself. Big people run up and down that thing all the time. Sometimes with kids. Sometimes just because. The view from the top is terrific. You can see the whole park from up there, and it’s freaky because it’s this tiny tiny platform and it wobbles around like anything.

Once there were these kids up there and they just yelled their heads off all afternoon. Made it hard to read my book but there was plenty of room on the large lawn overlooking the mangroves, and the pedestrian bridge over the mangroves, and the western line, and the sports club next door. And all this stuff is designed ingeniously so that wherever you are in the park’s seven hectares (other than the top of the spacenet), you can never really see all of it. And situated in the midst of New Lynn it’s a certainty that whenever you go there, there’ll be a rich diversity of people around. Playgrounds are common grounds. This one is especially good at what some designers call 'bump-space': spaces which nudge their occupants towards positive interactions.

And there’s art. Tons of art. Since this website is all about exploring the cultural landscape I should cover the art. But I forgot to note who did most of it. I know there’s a taurapa sculpture by Sunnah Thompson, which possibly depicts the Tainui tohunga Rakataura, and for all I know, the taurapa of the Tainui itself. It’s majestic and imposing and you can view it from one angle with the power lines behind it, which is weird-in-a-good-way; and when viewed from the pathway it’s got the mangroves behind it. While not exactly te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, these at least speak to the nearby portage of Portage Rd, traversed by waka for centuries.

Next door to Olympic Park is the Eco Matters centre. The best thing about Eco Matters is the New Lynn Bike Hub. This place is open Thursday to Sunday, 10 am - 2 pm. You take your bike there and they fix it. Even better, you take your bike there and they help you fix it. Even better again, if you haven’t got a bike you can go there and buy one for cheap. I bought this lovely old and rather brittle Avanti Giro road bike with really super aggressive geometry and it scares the hell out of me.

I also bought a bike for my daughter for really cheap. It’s kind of rough and a bit munty to look at, but also in perfect working order: gears, brakes and everything. When she inevitably outgrows it we’ll probably just donate it back to them and see what else they’ve got. I mean we could sell it, but for the few bucks we’d get, it’s easier just to re-donate and upgrade through The Hub.

Anyway, I rode up on my old bike one day and this kid about 12 years old rocked up and goes “need a hand?” and I was like “yeah the gears-” and thirty seconds later it was out of my hands and up on the bike clamp. Two minutes after that, he had the back wheel off and had completely disassembled the rear hub. Ten minutes after that, the sprockets were gleaming, the hub cleaned out of grime, a new chain installed and my gears were clicking through like clockwork.

I gave it a test ride on the pathway winding through the park. It was like a totally new bike.

So then I returned to The Bike Hub, went into the wee shop, made a donation, and bought an organic smoothie blended by my daughter on a bike blender thing. You can also get tons of really cool eco household stuff there.

Olympic Park was opened by none other than the Rt. Hon. Helen Clark in the 90s. It won an award for being such a cool park. Before that it was a rubbish dump, which was a bloody stupid idea because it’s right next to the Whau river, which I’ve written about before once or twice, and which no doubt suffered from tons of leaching toxins. Even though the mangroves make excellent filters, it’s better to give them a clean run and just let them be lovely spawning grounds for snapper.

Because that’s out-of-the-box awesome.

Image Credit: Ingolfson