Touring Whanganui with an engineer

Engineer and author Karen Wrigglesworth with the trig station in Karaka St, Castlecliff. Photo / Paul Brooks

Touring with an engineer
By Paul Brooks

Karen Wrigglesworth's new book celebrates and explains 40 of Whanganui's engineering marvels with maps, photos and text. An engineer herself, Karen is renowned for her newspaper articles about local engineering works. The book, Take Me With You! A Self-Drive Guide to Whanganui's Engineering Heritage, features cover artwork by Karen's 15-year-old daughter, Freyja.

Karen styles herself as a technical storyteller. Her easy-to-read writing allows her to introduce the layperson to the Durie Hill Tower, the observatory, the velodrome, the Raurimu Spiral, and many other places.

"I started writing about engineering in 2007, starting with the wastewater treatment plant, because there was this cool engineering story coming to an end ... I could see there was a story that needed to be captured. "It was an interest in how things work and wanting to share with people that engineering is not complicated, it's part of our everyday life. I guess I'm drawn to stories that are hidden in plain sight."

The photos in the book are part of the story, showing the tactile and textural character of many of the engineering works. Karen took the pictures. She says she wants people to go to these things and see them anew.

There are things we don't notice, know about or, in many cases, remember. Like the vault lights set into the footpath in town: thick glass cubes which once illuminated rooms below ground level.

"The trick of the technology is that they are prisms, so the prism refracts the light and enhances it. You could find them and reinstate them as part of the Victoriana of the streetscape if you wanted to."

Karen says engineers are problem solvers.

"That was what drew me to it ... the idea of taking this maths and turning it into a bridge or whatever solution. I really wanted to understand why things were done the way they were."

Her own voyage into engineering was a pragmatic solution. She has writing skills but didn't see a career path, so it was a toss-up between architecture and engineering.

She combines her engineering and writing skills to produce stories of real interest, and by the use of this book, she sees people touring around things in Whanganui and venturing further afield on day trips, gaining a new understanding of things they take for granted.

"Mostly, my criteria was to include places where there's something you can go and see, but it's also a bit of an adventure. It's also not trying to be prescriptive, so there are places that could be in there but aren't."

The profiles are new things, like the wind farm at Te Apiti, but she has included Tītokowaru's fighting pā, Tauranga-ika. "I'm intrigued by this engineering masterpiece and there's still a hint of it in the landscape."

Karen has added a page of acknowledgements in the book, a tribute to the people who helped. Hinemoa Ransom-Boyd of H&A Print is there, and the team at Ohakea, who went out of their way to provide what Karen wanted for one of the profiles, as well as Mischief on Guyton where she could relax.

Take Me With You! is being launched at 5.30pm, on Thursday, August 27 at Wairere House, cnr Bates St and Somme Parade, and will be available through Karen's website — karenwrigglesworthwriter.com, at Paige's Book Gallery and in the Whanganui Regional Museum shop.