St Heliers Water Tower

By The Auckland Psychogeographer

The water tower at Waimarie Street pulls off the magic trick of being an easily identifiable blot on the landscape that few Aucklanders will have ever visited, or would even know how to find. Easily spotted from St Heliers beach, the tower lurks up a drive in the suburban hills - away from the more obvious lookout points closer to the sea. In fact the tower - or more accurately the journey to the tower - offers an interesting vantage point, enabling one to peer around the locality, and back towards the city. From here you can properly see the tides come in and out, the assembled homes and roads like villages past. Boats traffic up and down, and out to sea there’s always Rangitoto.

Typically St Heliers functions as the end of the line - a graceful, green and low-key alternative to the gaudiness of Mission Bay - but a trip to the water tower reveals more territory to explore, both beyond the familiar outline of the hill, and back in time.

The tower in fact sits on the ridge of ash from the Whakahumu volcano that erupted 50,000 years ago. A fortified pa was sited on one side, facing out to sea, and the crater was a swamp by the 1930’s when Auckland Council acquired the land, gradually draining it and forming what is now Glover Park. At the highest point of the tuff, the water tower was constructed in 1936 and is still owned and operated by Watercare, a branch of Auckland Council.

Robust concrete, simple access ladders, various cellphone network equipment, a small outbuilding, and various sheds and a weatherbeaten Canary palm tree, the tower facility is humble and a bit ramshackle, up a little driveway dotted with miniature lanterns. Freely accessibly from the neighbouring plots, the site is large and curiously empty. Bits of building site debris and old boxes of tools presumably from some geotech earthworks digging are scattered here and there, but generally the place isn’t heavily littered. Instead there’s a view of slightly rundown suburbia and the odd half-built tree-hut, and a view down the crater into Glover Park.

A strangely blighted atmosphere befitting an exposed hilltop, with an overbearing sky, this is a place that is classically Auckland. Weathered, unfinished and ruggedly fetching.

Image Credits: The Auckland Psychogeographer