It's unlikely that many people, locals at least, rely on Kaitaia's town clock to tell the time. It was repaired seven or eight years ago by Pukenui man Bill Morris, but of late has fallen off the pace once again, each of the three faces telling different times, none of them especially accurate.
Bill, a retired GP, who has long been indulging his passion for things engineering, removed the clock's innards once more on Tuesday..
The clock work was historic, he said, and the master clock was a "wonderful" mechanism, but as with all things time took its toll. And he suspected that the clock could victim to another threat, in that it would likely lose its power supply if the Far North District Council's former service centre was sold.
"It will go on forever if it's serviced though," he said, adding that he would be pulling everything apart, cleaning the components, applying oil where it was needed and putting it all back together again.
How long that would take depended largely upon what other distractions came his way, Bill was confident that he would have no trouble seeing what he was doing; a $2 pair of reading glasses over his prescription lenses was all he would need.
He did suggest, however, that the clock might be more useful elsewhere, such as outside Te Ahu, so passing motorists could see it while the master clock would make an interesting addition to the atrium.
