Brian Rudman: A gondola on Rangitoto dishonours the taonga

Let's respect and protect our city's unique volcanic heritage. Illustration / Peter Bromhead

COMMENT

To climax the journalistic silly season – that dead time of the year when littering Poms make front page news – in come the new Maori guardians of Auckland's volcanic heritage with their hare-brained plan to plonk a gondola down the face of Rangitoto.

For years I've championed those lone voices fighting to protect and respect the city's unique volcanic heritage. The long battle to stop the Government ploughing the south-western motorway straight through the side of Mt Roskill springs to mind. Along with assorted attempts by land-owners to develop up the sides of various maunga.

So when local tribes added the volcanic cone reserves into their Treaty of Waitangi claims mix, I put any trepidations aside, thinking they couldn't do any worse in a guardianship sense, than local and national politicians have over the last 150 years. How wrong I was.

James Brown, chair of Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki, recently revealed his plans for commercialising Rangitoto. "We want to make these iconic landscapes accessible so a zipline is possible and also a gondola."

Then for good measure he added ""We could put in ski chairs, who knows?"

The usually seriously-minded Ngati Whatua leader, Ngarimu Blair gave his blessing, adding that "exciting ventures are in the pipeline."

Brown rejected any suggestion that the gondola would be detrimental to the Rangitoto landscape on the grounds that it wouldn't be visible from the mainland.

A resort to the "if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound" conundrum. The reality is, the pylons and gondola cars are going to be very visible from somewhere.

It might be from incoming cruise ships, offering incoming passengers a first view of the iconic harbour cone as a Disneyland ride in the Auckland volcanic theme park. Even if hidden from the harbour, this elevated ride will dominate the visit of every person traveling to the island, whether they use it or not.

Then there's the trail of physical damage to the unique volcanic landscape on which it will be built.

Three years ago, one of the first actions of the new Tupuna Maunga o Tamaki Authority, set up to "govern" the maunga following the treaty settlements, was to begin banning vehicular access to the city's popular cones.

Maungawhau/Mt Eden was first, authority chair Paul Majurey saying "For mana whenua (local people), the tihi of Maungawhau has always been a place to be treated with respect and reverence. The taonga is loved by all visitors as a place for quiet reflection and connection."

He pointed out "Motor vehicle restriction on the tihi of Maungawhau was signalled many years ago as a key measure to protect this taonga, and to reflect the Mana Whenua and community aspirations of their living connections with this taonga."

A Herald-Digipoll had 58 per cent of Aucklanders supporting the ban. Around this time, Majurey was also pushing the need to preserve the volcanic viewshafts which for decades have protected the "visual connection" to our "iconic" tupuna maunga (ancestral mountains.)

Calling it a "crossroads moment for Auckland," he said "do we preserve our identity, and a key point of difference around the world, or follow the high-rise path? "

He concluded: "The maunga have come to be treasured and celebrated by all communities for their striking landscape and heritage features, the distinct identity and sense of place they inspire…"

I couldn't agree more. That's why I find it inexplicable that the new guardians would now desecrate the taonga, both physically and visually, with massive unsightly gondola pylons – whether in sight of the mainland or not.

Majurey was right when he said "we need more than photo opportunities and lip service if we are to properly protect our natural heritage." It's time he reminded his fellow governors.

As the cones go, Rangitoto is the youngest, the largest and the least touched by human occupation. In the grand plan to gain Unesco World Heritage status for the volcanic field, cooking up money-making plans to Disneyfy the prize exhibit, suggests the new governors have no more respect than the old settlers who hacked into the side of the closest cone for road metal and erected ugly water reservoirs on top.