Teresa Smith with her dogs Dram (left) and Zena says a humble stormwater gully in Acacia Bay has become a treasured spot to the people who visit it regularly. Photo / Laurilee McMichael
Teresa Smith with her dogs Dram (left) and Zena says a humble stormwater gully in Acacia Bay has become a treasured spot to the people who visit it regularly. Photo / Laurilee McMichael
It is just a gully. From the outside, there is nothing much special to see about it. In fact, you'd hardly know it was there.
But to a group of people in Acacia Bay, the stormwater gully that runs parallel to Reeves Rd is the centre of its own specialcommunity.
Here in this unremarkable cleft in the land, people have found friendship, rest, beauty, poetry and connection. To them, it is a gathering place and a precious spot.
Teresa Smith first discovered the gully two years ago when she moved to Taupo from Auckland. Awaiting major back surgery and in pain, she could barely walk and was socially isolated, alone in a new town with no friends.
But she discovered the gully one day and while wandering along its winding path through the trees with her dogs Zena and Dram, came upon a sturdy wooden seat set in a shady grove, a great relief for at that point Teresa was in desperate need of a rest.
The gully in Acacia Bay, Taupo which has become an informal community gathering place. Photo / Laurilee McMichael
She took to returning to the gully and the seat, and before long she met other dog walkers. They chatted and laughed, their dogs played together and Teresa had made her first Taupo connections, thank to the gully.
"I have met wonderful friends - they embraced us."
One of those people was Ian Kennedy, the man who created the seat along the gully. Ian, who walks the gully with his ageing dalmatian Ruby, made the seat about four years ago at a time he too was having health problems.
He needed somewhere he could take a rest during his daily walk and the gully provided it, in the form of some timber slabs Ian discovered lying in it. From those he made a sturdy seat as a place for him, and other people to rest.
Then he went another step and added a garden around the seat which he keeps planted with flowers, and which the gully walkers often water. Some time later, the seat acquired its own plaque - Ian's Seat - it proclaims, although Ian says it wasn't him who put it there, and now it's become a gathering point.
"It's just to make it a little bit special," Ian says of the seat. "On the hot days it's lovely to have somewhere to sit down.
"We all love the gully and lots of us get together and our dogs are playing together while their owners are chatting and having a nice time and it's a nice little meeting place to have. At Christmas we even had a wee get-together down there and we had games and a dog biscuit scramble for the dogs and it was lovely."
The gully is immaculate and although the council is responsible for the mowing, one of the neighbours with a ride-on mower comes along occasionally to mow a path along the bottom to keep it tidy for the walkers. There is not a speck of rubbish or doggy-do to be seen either.
"Most of us who use it are very conscious of keeping it nice," says Ian. "There are a few people in holiday times that don't pick up their dog poo and we'll pick it up. It's a very special place for us all."
It's so special, in fact that the gully even has its own poem - author unknown - which is mounted on the tree behind Ian's Seat. It tells of the people and the dogs, mostly the dogs, who frequent the gully.
Ian goes there and sits on the seat every afternoon while taking Ruby for her afternoon walk, as does his wife Robin when she walks Ruby in the morning. He says one of the nicest things about this routine is he sees the same regulars every day.
