Obituary: Ron Wood

By ARNOLD PICKMERE

Manukau City manager. Died aged 78.

In 1965 Ronald Wood became manager of what then seemed one of the oddest cities in New Zealand, for a salary of $7500 a year.

Manukau, as the new city was called, covered 62,350ha, the largest land area of any city in the country.

There was almost a hectare each for its 65,000 inhabitants, who were scattered in clusters as far afield as Manurewa, Clevedon, Mangere and Otara.

Councillors touring the city in the early days mostly travelled through attractive countryside.

Ron Wood already knew the area. He had come from the Hutt County Council in 1959 to become county clerk and treasurer of the Manukau County Council.

At that time, areas such as Pakuranga, for example, had few houses and a skinny double-lane concrete roadway between hawthorn hedges edging the paddocks between the Panmure Bridge and Howick.

Manukau county and the Manurewa borough merged in 1965 and the resulting 65,000 population was definitely a city - in those days towns became cities when they reached 20,000.

Wood served the only three mayors Manukau has had - Hugh Lambie, Sir Lloyd Elsmore and Sir Barry Curtis. He was the only city manager for the first 20 years.

He recalled later that a poll decided the new city's name - Manukau won over Akarana, Churchill, Manurewa and Rutherford.

Manukau grew phenomenally fast by New Zealand standards and Wood's job was to make sure the city facilities kept pace. That meant some changes where folk did not welcome suburbia moving in on their rural lifestyle.

"I have been associated with all the major decisions in the city's history," he said. These were mostly taken in the 1960s and included buying 140ha around the city.

The most notable was 20ha of pasture in Wiri on the western side of the Southern Motorway.

The wisdom of buying a block of cow paddocks to build what is now the Manukau City Centre was questioned at the time but the council pressed on. It gave the city focus and made it more attractive to business.

Even by 1983, when the population had topped 163,000 and Mangere alone had 45,000, it was reckoned that half the people living in Manukau also worked there. Now the population is almost 300,000.

The Manukau council this week described Wood as the architect of the city in its formative years, a person who had a wonderful way with people.

Wood's basic philosophy, as he described it, was to mould Manukau into the best city in New Zealand.

"It has been very exciting to be team leader for a jolly good team of planners, engineers, sociologists and all the other staff we have here," he said on retiring in 1985.

Manukau is essentially a product of modern city planning. How it will be regarded in future years will also be how Wood will come to be judged, the man who was there at the start.

He is survived by his wife Coral and two children.