Secret of Muldoon's Corner

A retired Masterton carpenter who drove the Rimutaka Hill Rd every working day for almost 30 years has revealed the secret behind the naming of the notorious Muldoon's Corner.
Road crews are partway through a $16.5 million revamp of a section of road that includes the infamous corner, which had been the second tight lefthand corner after the summit on the Upper Hutt side of the hill road, says 80-year-old Ian Tasker.
The first corner on that side of the hill had been called Trig Corner and Jim's Corner had been the third significant bend after the summit, he said.
However, Muldoon's Corner had been the bend that most tested a driver's skill and nerve, Mr Tasker said.
Sir Robert Muldoon was the 31st Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1975 to 1984, who was distinguished by an iron financial grip on the country's coffers and a cheek scar that lent a unique skew to his face whenever he smiled.
"It was called Muldoon's Corner because of a knobbly bit on the overlooking cliff-face that came right down on the road. It looked just like Muldoon's grin. And it was almost as tight as the man himself," Mr Tasker said.
"They took some of that knobbly bit off in the late '70s and then had another go at it in the '80s.
"Now they've taken it altogether."
The multi-million-dollar project, which will finally erase Muldoon's Corner among a slew of other changes, began in late 2009.
The work aims to significantly improve safety on the road by easing several tight bends, and creating greater visibility.
Mr Tasker said he "first came over the hill in 1948" and in 1961 began work as a carpenter and joiner for a Wellington firm that required him to travel the road most working days.
He said he consequently drove the hill for up to six days a week over the ensuing years until he retired as a company foreman in the late 1980s.
"I knew almost every bump and used to know locations on the road by the drain numbers, like all the constant hill drivers did."
He has collected a stack of literature on the hill road and plans for its improvements that hark back to the 1970s and beyond.
Included is a 1950s proposal to the then Ministry of Works in Masterton from the company that built the Rimutaka rail tunnel that outlined a combined road and rail tunnel instead.
Mr Tasker said the plan featured a northern road approach built on pylons with a massive concrete canopy at the tunnel entrance to protect the carriageway and travellers against rockfall.
The plan was scotched by the government of the day, that deemed it too expensive, Mr Tasker said.
Other alternatives to the hill road, as suggested in a road authority document from 1996, was a tunnel cutting at the summit, a coastal route around the South Wairarapa and the Wainuiomata Valley that linked at Petone to the Wellington motorway, and a roadway that skirted the Rimutaka valley floor and not the flanks of the hill itself.
The present revamp work is expected to be complete by the middle of next year, according to roading engineers.