TRAVEL BREAKS

ROSS THORBY: TAMAKI MAKAURAU - ‘DESIRED BY MANY’

Unless you have experienced it yourself you can’t really appreciate what a buzz it is to arrive into our fair city by sea. Tamaki Makaurau - ‘desired by many’.

Nor can you appreciate how lucky we are to be able to berth at the bottom of our main street when most ports around the world have to accommodate today’s ‘family-sized’ and ‘super -sized’ ships miles out of town where the most scenic part of their berth is multi-coloured, highstacked shipping containers blocking the view.

A few years ago the dilemma of berthing the odd supersized ship calling into Auckland brought about squeals of protest at extending Queens Wharf, or even, God forbid, planting a concrete pile into the harbour to accommodate those floating cash cows. The exorbitant cost, which blew out at every reporting, did seem to be out of proportion to the number of times they were needed, so I have to admit some sympathy on my part - I may also admit to holding the odd placard at the time.

But have you noticed? No one has mentioned the ‘Dolphin’ for ages, protests about the wharf extensions have diminished and we have heard not one hoot from the ‘Stop Stealing Our Harbour’ contingent in months.

After the debacle of the proposed wharf extension and the subsequent ‘Dolphin solution’, the rally, the protests, our mayor turning pale at the mention of the word - things have gone awfully quiet and the Resource Consent obtained to build the $17m Dolphin has (apparently) been binned – hopefully never to be recycled.

But I bear good news.

There are plans afoot to satisfy all - including the most vehement of harbour protectors. A compromise plan has been proposed that should satisfy both critics and those relying on the financial windfall the cruise industry brings to our much loved Tamaki Makaurau.

If you have been in Quay Street lately, having negotiated the sea of orange cones and the labyrinth of wire barriers then peered through the railings of the big red fence, you will see just between Bledisloe and Captain Cook Wharfs, the sad remains of Marsden Wharf. Its rotting carcass abandoned, unclaimed - an ugly eyesore. Now only fit for the seagulls resting there, it awaits the fruition of a new plan that will see it demolished, and replaced, to sport the shiny ocean going hulls of whatever behemoths that have survived the Covidean landscape of 2020. Tastefully berthed alongside a bright and shiny new cruise terminal, they will be positioned - enviably to the rest of the world, at the feet of the City of Sails.

The new reconditioned Bledisloe Wharf and Large Ship Facility will help increase our Port’s total capacity to at least four cruise ships during the course of a day, and also service more cargo ships satisfying our stumbling, but recovering economy. our economy will far outweigh the alternatives. Hopefully this will include the Queen Mary 2 that Cunard has refused to bring back due to its only option of ‘hovering’ out in our fair harbour for the day - not entirely environmentally friendly - which is, after all, the very image we strive to portray - ‘100% Pure’.

And we need to be ready - for if we build it why wouldn’t they come?

There is no reason why cruising cannot return to our shores in eyewatering numbers once Covid has become history. We were, up until recently, part of the largest growing cruise market in the industry and we live in a part of the world that fascinates the less travelled Americans and Europeans who consider our position on the other side of the planet to be somewhat exotic, and where the scenery, in their minds rightly or wrongly, consists of a Tolkien like landscape and the site of many battles with Middle Earth Orcs.

We need to be ready for them, and now while things are in hiatus we should be working on our master plan. This sounds like a perfect ‘Shovel Ready Project’ to me - if only we could find someone to loosen the purse strings and find a shovel.

Ports of Auckland hold an open weekend each year which is a great opportunity for the people of Auckland and the Ports to begin healing some wounds and to realise that we need each other. Come and give them the once over on Saturday 31 January 2021, and ask them about the new plan. (ROSS THORBY)  PN

roscoesseafever.blogspot.com