Editorial: Abandoned home stays in picture

The abandoned home still stands despite a suspected failed arson attack.

A person, or persons, unsuccessfully attempted to torch Poukawa's well-known derelict house on Saturday night.

Suffice to say you're not one of life's high flyers if you're a failed arsonist.

The intended target is, as someone once told me, one of the country's most photographed houses.

As a teenager I passed it many times travelling from Waipawa to school in Hastings. The contours of the humble whare were stamped into my subconscious.

During those trips I lost track of the number of photographers I saw scaling the roadside fence to take its portrait.

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Even if Saturday's arsonist had been successful, this place's visage was never in peril.

It's recognisable to almost anyone who's spent time in this region. Each year something changes: it sheds a sheet of corrugated iron, a wall collapses or a section of ceiling implodes. Still it endures.

Yesterday our photographer took photographs inside the house (see page 4). It's as you'd expect, loose and dangerous. A red-brick fireplace, half the original height, remains its heart.

For me, it's State Highway 2's cult-hero. I wonder if this was why it was targeted. It's perhaps like Kerouac's novel On the Road, one of the most defaced books in public libraries.

In summer, when the front paddock turns tinder dry, the pastoral amenity bears a resemblance to the 1948 realist painting Christina's World - sans Christina. I'd hazard it's a product of the 1920-30s, yet for some reason it doesn't look part of the built environment.

Paintless, dirt-coloured weatherboards make up forty-odd horizons. It's older than the hill it sits on. It's a metaphor for a thousand things.

The beauty is the mystery of how a departed, people-less home is our most photogenic subject.