Piha makes waves over post office

Chris Warman opens the mail centre three times a week. Picture / Martin Sykes

Piha residents have accused Telecom of using the West Auckland beach to boost its image while threatening to pull the plug on the community-run postal centre.

A few years ago, a company advertisement used the theme of an executive holidaying in a Piha house looking out to the wave-battered Lion Rock.

She was using Jetstream to videoconference into a board meeting while her partner painted her toenails under the desk.

Locals were not amused. Jetstream was unavailable in Piha and they lobbied to get it.

Yesterday, the community was preparing to take on Telecom again - this time in a tug of war over a hut-sized building with a tidy garden, a door in vintage Post Office Red, a battery of steel postboxes and a polished counter guarding pigeon holes stuffed with letters.

As Piha's postal centre for nearly two decades, the building plays a big part in the community's communications with the world on the other side of the Waitakere Ranges.

Telecom wanted to sell the land under the small postal centre, said residents' association secretary Helen Pearce.

The quarter-acre (0.1ha) section gives a view of Lion Rock, not far from where where waterfront baches fetch $1 million.

But Ms Pearce said the land was taken under the Public Works Act to build a telephone exchange back in the days when the Post Office also ran the telephone service.

Later a more modern exchange was built behind the former hut-sized building.

"The Post Office gave the discarded building to the community for its postal service," she said. But in January last year, the happy arrangement was shattered by a bolt of lightning, which caused a fire in the exchange.

Instead of repairing the damage, Telecom substituted compact roadside cabinets that changing technology allows to do the job.

Telecom spokesman John Goulter said NZ Post and Piha residents were told a year ago it didn't need the land.

"We have offered the building to them and Telecom would pay for relocation if they find another site.

"We acknowledge they have a long history of using that building and want to be reasonable. But it's New Zealand Post's responsibility to provide a post office."

New Zealand Post spokesman Ian Long said Telecom had granted it more time to work with the residents' association to look for an alternative site.

Although the centre was community-run and boxes were given to the community postal centre in 1989, his company wanted to ensure a secure delivery service.

But at the postal centre yesterday, residents doubted this was possible and were preparing to hold a public protest meeting on Sunday at 2.30pm.

Ms Pearce said there was nowhere to relocate the building and the boxes, because the association could not afford land and new structures were banned from the Piha Domain.

Piha has no home mail deliveries. The centre began in 1987 as a resident's reaction to paying $80 a year for the rural delivery service.

Chris Warman, who opens the centre three days a week, said it handled mail for "a couple of hundred" residents who otherwise faced a 25-minute drive to clear boxes at Henderson.