Waiotira railway station, Waiotira, Northland, New Zealand

All photos (apart from one obvious exception) taken by me, April 2010.

Now, as much as I love slagging off hideous architecture, I don't want Mow Your Lawn! to get too bogged down in rants like the sort I just published about the Elizabeth Tower Hotel. So I thought I would fairly quickly follow it by showcasing the other side of the blog: the fascinating world of derelict and decaying man-made structures. Today's subject is the very decrepit Waiotira railway station in the middle of nowhere, lost somewhere in the rolling hills of the Northland region of New Zealand, a couple of hours out of Auckland.

The old back platform is in the foreground. If you can tell.

Waiotira station is located on the last section of the railway between Auckland and Whangarei to be opened. A rough-and-ready kind of freight service operated from 1923, but it wasn't until late 1925 that passenger trains began passing through here. But soon Waiotira was a railway junction, with a branch line leaving this station for Dargaville to the west. Between the mid-1940s and the mid-1960s, this was a busy station where trains from Auckland to Opua or Okaihau via Whangarei met local services that ran between Waiotira and Dargaville. It had two platforms, one for the main line and one for the Dargaville trains, a station building, and a busy goods yard. But that's all history.

Waiotira, June 1985. Credit: jeffpylenz; source.

Go to Waiotira today and try to imagine what it was like around 1950. Both railway lines are still open - just. They are on the brink of closure. As for the station itself? It's pretty eerie here in Waiotira really. It's hard to even get a sense of how this was once a busy junction, with passengers changing trains and goods being trans-shipped. Just look at that lonely platform; it's fading back into the landscape, covered by grass in an even more substantial way than Dargaville station. The only reason a train would stop here is so that locomotives on freight trains between Dargaville and Whangarei can swap ends. Passengers have not boarded regularly scheduled trains here since 1976, and the platform is now so overgrown and inaccessible that even a special excursion could not use it. It's hard to believe that even in June 1985, there was a decent-sized, well-painted, and not unattractive building sitting on that platform (see photo above right). If you told me nobody had set foot on it since that last regular service in 1976, I would have believed you.

The old goods yard, with Waiotira township behind.

The yard is basically a thing of the past. The main line and a short loop are still useable; a third track is in place but looked to me like it could no longer be used. The rest is gone. There are no facilities; the back platform has long since been taken up; there are certainly no wagons being dropped off or collected by passing trains. You have to use your imagination to recall a time when wagons were shunted busily, local produce was loaded, and much-needed supplies were dropped off. Waiotira was more than just a couple of hours away from Auckland in those days, and this station was a lifeline. Now, it's nothing. The only life is a signal protecting the branch to Dargaville. Even those tracks are losing their glimmer.

Well there's SOME platform surface left!

Like many country New Zealand towns, Waiotira nowadays is barely more than a dot on a map. There are just a few houses, and it's little wonder that the railway station building has not been preserved or that the station precinct has become so derelict and forgotten. It is, in a way, symbolic of how rural communities are fading away in many places. It shows how in this part of Northland, like so many other regions, being away from the State Highway and being stripped of your railway facilities one-by-one (first the expresses, then the slow passenger trains, then the freight) can be ... perhaps not a kiss of death, but a key part of the slow decline of rural areas.

Rating: Vacant, which I think translates to about Unpleasant on our oh-so-formal rating system.

Update: 786-798 Elizabeth Street (Elizabeth Tower Hotel), Carlton, VIC, Australia

Well, well. Early this month, Charlotte wrote about the Elizabeth Tower Hotel and its decrepitude. She noted that it was subject to an application by the University of Melbourne to demolish it and construct the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity. Today's good news is that Melbourne Uni has succeeded in this application, as reported today in The Age.
 

Soon to cease being a blight upon the skyline.

What is worth noting is that for some reason, almost inexplicable to me, this building is heritage listed. Some people, judging by comments on that article, seem to think it has some sort of aesthetic merit worth preserving for future generations. I personally would go even further than Charlotte in condemning this monstrosity of a building. For full disclosure, I am a historian, my work has occasionally led me to dabble my toe in architectural history, and I am usually the first person to come out and bat for heritage protection. I am continually saddened by the way many cities have demolished their history, and I am infuriated by how many new buildings have been erected with the facades of their predecessor as some sort of tokenistic concession to history. However, this building is truly and utterly discardable, and the only argument I can possibly fathom in favour of its retention is as a warning to future generations not to replicate the failings of some 20th century architects.

The spiral staircase is cool, I will readily concede that. However, a single staircase is not enough to save a hideous building. If you take away the staircase, you are left with just another 1950s highrise lacking any charm or personality whatsoever. It is an exceedingly plain, bricky building with rows of generic windows littered with unbecoming, mouldy old air conditioning units. I never ventured inside myself, but by all accounts the cleaning staff had long since lost the battle with half a century's worth of accumulated grime - and, perhaps, had lost the will to live too.

I don't know where Paul Roser, National Trust conservation manager, gets the following ridiculous notion, as quoted in The Age, that the decision to demolish this building is "another part of the steady attrition of significant buildings in the city".  No, Roser. Besides a staircase of middling importance and effectively no historical notability (wow a tall spiral staircase, nobody's ever seen that before!), there is absolutely nothing significant about this building. It is not a landmark. No tourist is going to come and see this. Locals walk past it without a second thought. The only few people who could possibly give a shit are the same bizarre people who continue to encourage wretched architectural fads that are making Melbourne and other cities uglier. The National Trust has much better things to worry about than some meaningless and charmless inner city hotel that, the moment it's knocked down, won't be missed by anybody.

Time for the Elizabeth Tower Hotel to check out of Melbourne.

Of course, I have utterly no confidence that the University of Melbourne will build a quality building in its place. The uni's latest major project, the new Economics and Commerce Building, is a monument to blithering stupidity, as I'm sure I made abundantly clear in this particular rant. However, regardless of what goes up in place of the Elizabeth Tower Hotel, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal has made the right decision to bowl it over before it festers any longer. Councillor Peter Clarke, again quoted in the aforementioned Age article, claims that this decision illustrates how VCAT is "out of step with the broader views of the community". I think the only person out of step is you and your malfunctioning eyes, Clarke. The skyline will be much better upon the removal of this damning legacy to 1950s architectural follies.

Rating: This decision does not impact Charlotte's original rating of Condemnable, which I endorse.

528 Albion Street, Brunswick West, VIC, Australia

I would love to know what happened to this house, located on Albion Street almost at the point where Brunswick West becomes Essendon. Despite living not too far away from it, I only started walking past it regularly in late 2008; if I'd gone by before, I'd not noticed it - possibly because it hadn't yet suffered its fateful calamity. As you can see in this capture from Google Streetview (this area was done before April 2009, but I'm not sure how far before), it was once a very plain sort of place:

Aerial view from sometime before October 2010.

And now I'm just so curious. When I first remember laying eyes on it, it was the shell of a house. Its twin next door, seemingly a mirror image, is fine, structurally at least; its windows seem permanently sealed like a prison, but that's a rant for another time. This collection of walls with vacant windows, however, was just standing around forlornly, evidently showing the effects of fire. You can see what I mean in the Google Satellite screenshot at right. Compounding the fire damage was exposure to the elements, the streaks from the flames now joined by streaks from the rain. The "elements" in this neck of the world tend to end up including graffiti too, in this case some pretty scratchy and pissweak tagging. A wire fence was along the street frontage with a builder's sign, but it didn't look like much had happened in a while.

Then suddenly, I went past one day in the second half of 2010, and as you can see in my pictures - it had the skeleton of a roof! Some work seems to have gone on inside too, and the property was in general tidied up a bit. Then the mystery deepened: nothing has happened since and the property is becoming less orderly by the day. The skeletal roof is starting to cop the elements. The house looks more forlorn than ever; rather than a phoenix rising from the ashes, it's giving the impression of the ashes just moving around a bit.

Is this a sad case of an insurance company not paying up, or an educational lesson about the perils of not being insured? Is it a buyer or builder struggling for funds? Is this just renovations being carried out on a sort of geological timespan? Why didn't they just knock over the smouldering remnants and start anew? Well, I can at least answer the last question; it appears to have some sort of heritage protection. In my search for information here, hoping to come up with a relevant newspaper example, I found something mildly creepy - somebody died in this house. But not when it burnt down! As this births and deaths page from The Argus shows, a Margaret Spicer died here on 29 December 1945, with her funeral proceeding from this address to Fawkner Cemetery two days later. However, I can't seem to find any news about how Mrs Spicer's house ended up in this state over half a century later! My Google powers have failed me.

Rating: At present, condemnable! Before the fire? Lick o' paint. If it's ever fully rebuilt? I'll let you know!

341 Victoria Street and 92 Henkel Street, Brunswick, VIC, Australia

I've been a little busy these last few days. I've been fine though, just doing fun stuff like maths assignments and turning 20 (anyone want to change my colostomy bag? I'm too old to do it myself). However, if I had lied to you and told you that I had a chronic case of food poisoning after eating food from this place here, would you believe me? I bet you would.

341 Victoria Street in all its derelict glory.

Ok, ok, I know it's closed and it has been for some time. I don't care. I have a funny feeling that it probably looked exactly the same when it was in operation. I wonder why it was closed down?  Now, before you go on with something like "stop stereotyping Chinese takeaways, they're perfectly clean", I might just go on a little tangent to tell you about this place I saw in Sydney's Chinatown back in August 2010. It was a takeaway Chinese place right near the railway station, which I imagine gave it more than its fair share of customers each day. It was pretty damn grubby - I would have never set food inside - but I thought it must be at least acceptable in order to continue operating in such a busy area. How naive of me! I happened to walk past one quiet morning on the way to the train, and witnessed five or six rats come scurrying out from under the door of this place and vanish into the drain. I was honestly almost sick. I guess they would have just been pissed off to lose the best item off their breakfast menu!

So yeah, what I'm trying to get at is that this place probably did close down due to a failed food safety inspection. However, there is still someone who lives in the space above the shop - maybe the ex-owner? This would make sense since I saw him as we walked by, hacking and coughing and spitting off the rooftop. Truly charming!

Hungry? No? What a surprise!

However, at least that place is actually closed down, unlike this. As far as I can see, this one is perfectly functional.

92 Henkel Street (Victoria Street frontage).

Now I don't know about you, but if I was a food wholesaler, I'd kind of like to get some customers every now and then. In order to do that, I'd have an attractive and most importantly CLEAN shop front. This one fails on every account. It looks as if it used to be a mechanic's workshop, and I wouldn't be surprised if the food in here was prepared on old oily benchtops. Organic products? Yeah, probably just the algae they scrape out of the sink every day. I don't know, maybe I'm being too harsh. It might be really nice inside. Maybe. Can you tell I'm not even convincing myself?

Oh, and get a roof. That wouldn't hurt.

Please, if you're starting a business in the food industry, at least paint and clean up your shop! Things can only get better from there. But if you decide not to, just don't come running to me when you get shut down for having sea snails attached to your taps.

Rating: Damnable

786-798 Elizabeth Street (Elizabeth Tower Hotel), Carlton, VIC, Australia

Looks more like a hospital to me.

I don't understand this hotel. One day, we were walking past and noticed exactly how dilapidated it was, and yet we couldn't figure out how it got this way. We both swore that last time we had seen it, it was a perfectly functional inner city hotel. And now it just looks like it's about to fall over, with a load of smashed  windows, graffiti covering the walls and a dingy carpark that seems to be used for storage of ex-hotel materials, such as rolls of carpet and old chairs.  Seriously, how does somewhere like this get so run down so fast? It's in a pretty busy location, so it might not be as easy to break in to and destroy as some of the other places we've covered here, yet it still looks like this. I would say that I'd like to break in and check it out, but it just brings to mind squatters and used syringes.

The old carpark, with bonus chairs.

It can't have been abandoned for long, either. Google Maps street view still shows it looking pretty fresh and clean, and a Google search brings up many results that would suggest this place is still in use. However, further searching lead me to find out that the University of Melbourne has been attempting to lodge an application to demolish the Elizabeth Tower Hotel and replace it with an institute for infection and immunity. To this, I would say go ahead and build something useful, but I'm quite nervous. After the miserable abortion which didn't at all remind me of deciduous trees in winter, I have somewhat lost faith in the architects employed by the university.

No vacancy, except for squatters.

Even when this place was used, they could have tried with the architecture! It's quite hideous, let's be honest. Even when it was a little cleaner and devoid of graffiti, it still looks rather sparse and budget. The spiral staircase with the glass windows probably provides a great view of the city, but from the outside it is just an eyesore. A good lick of paint may have redeemed it slightly, but definitely wouldn't have saved it. I think it was for the best that this hotel was abandoned in the end. Even if the University of Melbourne does fuck the site up with another mouldy building, at least it will have a purpose that is a little better than housing hoards of fat American tourists who hop on northbound trams and ask "are you going to Flinders Street?" Small mercies.

How very welcoming.

Rating: Condemnable

Update; It has come to our attention that the University of Melbourne's application to demolish this building has been approved. Axver has written an entry on this welcome decision - be sure to read it, if just to drive home again how hideous this place is.

Donovan's Road bridge, Healesville, VIC, Australia

Donovan's Road is a small side road west of Healesville township, off the main Healesville-Yarra Glen Road.  In fact, I think its official name is "Donovans Road", but I love correct apostrophes a bit too much for that.  It is a pretty short affair, winding its unsealed way between paddocks to a railway line, ending not long after crossing the tracks.  It would be wholly unremarkable if it weren't for one thing: its condemned bridge.

The bridge (and RM 22) as seen from the level crossing.

I'm honestly surprised a bridge was ever built here, since the branch railway to Healesville was constructed in the 19th century, in an era well before massive traffic backlogs behind boomgates and impatient twits speeding in front of trains led to cries of "zomg every road/rail crossing should be grade separated!!!!1!1" and the like.  Donovan's Road is pretty damn trivial, and the planners certainly couldn't be fucked bridging much more significant roads nearby.  And now that we're in this age of "grade separate EVERYTHING!!! and make the damn railways pay for it even though it's only of benefit to road users!!!11!11", the bridge has funnily enough been replaced by an at-grade level crossing.  Not that it's a big deal, since the Healesville branch last saw revenue trains in the 1980s and this section of track only sees a few weekend services run by the good folk at the Yarra Valley Tourist Railway (allow me this opportunity to give their fine restoration work a massive shout-out).

Although the bridge has been superseded, it is by no means gone.  It continues to loom above the railway line, blocked off from road traffic, condemned but nonetheless standing.  I admit I find decaying relics like this simply fascinating.  In its heyday, it would've been a pretty unremarkable bridge - small, of very basic construction, indistinguishable from hundreds of others around the state.  But now that it has fallen into disuse, the forces of nature have worn away at it and given it a rustic, decayed sort of charm with flaking paint, creaky boards, and even a couple of random weeds to drive home the point about its dereliction.

More photos of this and other disused Yarra Valley bridges here.

If more people had any reason to come out this way, I'd wonder if some bloody idiot drink-driving on their way home had ever mistakenly tried to cross the bridge.  It doesn't look like it could really withstand the weight of any decent-sized vehicle!  I certainly wouldn't try my luck, though you could probably get away with one of those Smart cars.  And honestly, even if you re-opened the bridge, it looks like it could go days without traffic anyway ...

Rating: Condemnable by default, since it actually is condemned.  If it weren't, it would not garner such a harsh rating.

55 Nelson Place (Willy Tavern), Williamstown, VIC, Australia

Williamstown is a very nice seaside suburb that I visited for the first time recently. It's not the kind of place where I would expect to find old, rundown buildings - quite the opposite. Nelson Place is home to many interesting restaurants and eclectic shops selling tasteful (but useless) wares for housewives with a bit too much money. So imagine my surprise and excitement when I came across this wreck of an old tavern!

As seen from the corner of Ann Street and Nelson Place.

I can't really work out why this place came to be abandoned. The surrounding streets are full of lovely houses, and I'm sure the residents would love to pop down for a drink at the Willy (teehee) at the end of a long day. In addition to that, I'm sure it would get a fair amount of patronage from all the tourists wanting a cold beer after a hot day at the beach. Yet here it stands looking like it will fall down at the faintest gust of wind. I haven't been able to find out when this place was closed. At a guess I would estimate that it closed in about 1972, but this article from 1992 indicates that it was still in operation then. Also, what a surprise - the Willy Tavern was partly owned by a Collingwood player with a love of topless barmaids! Sounds like it was a pretty classy joint back in the day. The tavern was also used in the filming of the TV series Blue Heelers, in which it was used as the Commercial Hotel.

Graffiti, cracks, broken drainpipe and decrepit balcony.

It may come as a surprise to learn that this building is actually heritage listed. Now I don't know about you, but when I think of heritage listed buildings, I imagine them being cared for and preserved. This is most decidedly NOT that case for the Willy Tavern! Some of the cracks in the exterior walls are terrifying, and all I can say is that I'm glad Victoria isn't prone to earthquakes. The interior of the tavern seems to have been quite heavily vandalised - graffiti is visible through the broken windows on the upper floors, and the windows and doors on the lower floors have been covered in heavy corrugated iron sheets. Those vandals must have been fucking brave - I wouldn't even set foot on that rusty old balcony, let alone go inside and risk the whole thing collapsing on me! Seriously, I'm sure that someone could at least make a quick buck off the Willy Tavern by setting up some kind of Blue Heelers themed bar.

Interestingly enough, I found some photos of the tavern from 2007 and 2008, in which it looks a little less dingy - the windows haven't yet been smashed to bits and the corrugated iron hasn't been put up over the lower doors and windows. This place clearly just hasn't aged well at all. I imagine that towards the end it may have been losing lots of money, so they probably couldn't afford to maintain the hotel's exterior even then. It amuses me that the gaudy neon sign is still intact, though a little worse for wear. Still, even when it was in use, I'm pretty sure that "beer" never resembled anything other than the sludge at the bottom of the Moonee Ponds Creek.

One of many gigantic exterior cracks.

It's sad that a heritage listed building has been allowed to simply rot away like this. Perhaps that's what they're aiming for though - just heritage list it and ignore it, wait for it to fall down and then sell the land off at ridiculously inflated prices so that some "architect" can erect another mushroom-coloured shitbox to ruin the town. I guess they're just waiting for the next big storm to hit Victoria. Until then, though, I'm sure the Willy Tavern will continue to decay, attract vandals and cause complaints from the local residents. Maybe next time we visit Williamstown, we'll be able to show you some photos from inside - it seems that the back wall of the tavern isn't far from just falling off. I really would love to see what it's like inside, but as I mentioned before, I'd be afraid to even tread too heavily nearby in case I brought the whole thing crashing down. Still, the Willy Tavern can now claim the dubious honour of holding our second-ever Cellar Floor rating! Now there's something to be, uh, proud of.

Rating: Cellar floor

101 Waterfront Way (Melbourne Eye / Southern Star Observation Wheel), Docklands, VIC, Australia

LaTrobe St end of Docklands in March 2008; Melbourne Eye at hard right.

It's fair to say that a number of New Zealand cities have Australian equivalents.  Christchurch is a miniature Adelaide.  Auckland is a miniature Sydney.  And perhaps the reason why I took to Melbourne so merrily is because it's just Wellington writ large, but lacking any serious hills to climb.  They are both the cultural capitals of their respective countries.  They both have by far the most competent public transport of their respective countries (though that isn't saying much in either case).  Their dining precincts are unparalleled in any other city in their respective countries.  And after Wellington did an impeccable job converting its old wharves into a welcoming, vibrant waterfront precinct, Melbourne decided it had to replicate this idea.

Unfortunately, Melbourne didn't quite grasp the idea properly.  Anybody who has been to Docklands can attest to the fact that it can be a pretty sterile, lifeless area trying way too hard to attract ... well, it seems to want hordes of tourists and shoppers, but somewhat in contradiction it wants them to be a higher class of clientele, cashed up sorts who will blow heaps of money on impractical clothes and a meal that costs four times what you'd pay at a normal Melbourne restaurant but is only a quarter the size.  Of course, cashed up bogans dismiss Docklands as a hub of leftie yuppies, while actual lefties such as myself couldn't afford to live there even if we wanted to.  You see the dilemma.  So to help lure some more people in, the Southern Star observation wheel was built ... and that's when things got hilarious.

In our entry about Moonee Ponds Creek, you would have already seen this picture of the Southern Star from Railway Canal, taken during construction in April 2008:

Now if you thought "how'd the London Eye get into that picture?", I don't blame you.  No doubt most people have heard of the London Eye; a gigantic ferris wheel beside the Thames that affords spectacular views of the city.  Somebody decided there were enough people in Melbourne who'd also want to pay money to be taken from one place ... to exactly the same place.  Well, pretty much as soon as this thing was proposed for Melbourne a few years after the London Eye opened, the comparisons flowed in.  Can't we have original ideas?  Don't we look like such colonials for copying London?  So on and so forth; the unofficial name "Melbourne Eye" stuck much better than "Southern Star Observation Wheel", a downright stupid name.  Construction began in 2006, and after a couple of delays and inevitable snide comments by everybody, it opened in December 2008.

February 2009 from West Melbourne.

Hooray?  Not so fast.  In January 2009, just a month later, the Melbourne Eye closed.  That's right, after just a month in operation, it shut down.  The damn thing suffered buckling and cracks!  The operators tried to blame all of this on a rather severe heatwave (yes, as in that heatwave that gave us Black Saturday) ... it was later discovered to be a design fault, though I'm pretty sure any big-mouth pundit on the street was proclaiming that the moment the wheel closed.  This led to the most hilarious part of the saga: the wheel was taken down for repairs (or, so it seemed, for good) while the legs remain up to the present, clearly visible from the main highway and intercity railway lines into the city from the north.

Lonely legs in February 2010.

Cranes join the legs in January 2011.

Two years later, this erectile dysfunction has become something of the Melbourne answer to North Haverbrook's monorail, if you catch my drift.  "There ain't no observation wheel and there never was!"  Yet amazingly, reconstruction began last month!  Can't wait for the Melbourne Eye's next month of operation.  How about June-July 2012, then it closes because of a "harsh winter", aka more structural defects and revenue being markedly underwhelming?  After all, that's the crucial difference between London and Melbourne's Eyes: London put theirs beside major attractions in the middle of the city, while Melbourne parked theirs on the city fringe.  Beside the wheel, you have an area of urban renewal that most people don't really care about enough to visit, and a giant fucking railway yard (great for me but not so much for sane people).  Before you get through the reconstruction, folks, you might want to have a quick re-think about the wheel's location.

Rating: Unpleasant, in a hilarious way.  I'm sure it'll be fine once it's ready, but those lonesome legs haven't been a good look.