A band of guerrilla town renovators have taken on their biggest job yet - an extreme makeover for a toilet block described by one visitor as the worst in New Zealand.
Since Friday of last week, a group of volunteers calling themselves the Paihia Phantom Placemakers have been hard at work in the Marsden Rd public loos, first demolishing thick masonry walls and now rebuilding to a radical, and hopefully pleasing, design.
The loos are rated the worst and yet the most-used in the Bay of Islands tourist town, because they are next to the main coach stop and a short skip from the wharf and main shopping street. The plan is to open up the dank and dingy toilet block, making it lighter, safer and less prone to vandalism.
Project leader Grant Harnish, who also chairs the community trust Focus Paihia, said the toilets were "a true embarrassment" to the town. Their state was summed up by graffiti in the ladies' toilet saying: "Worst public toilets I have seen thus far in NZ."
"The level of complaints we had about them was so high. It was the smell, the vandalism ... they even had an open sewer at the back. They were truly disgusting," he said.