Par Murray Dewhurst à Auckland, en Nouvelle-Zélande.
In a move that adds new meaning to the old saying ‘There goes the neighbourhood’, some of the old houses in my area are actually being driven off down the road.
In this case a 100+ year old Victorian ‘corner angle bay’ villa was cut into 3 parts, jacked up onto 3 hydraulic trailers then taken away in the dead of night.
The old place is apparently destined for a country plot somewhere up north. This is great of course, at least it isn’t being demolished, but the continued removal, destruction and replacement with concrete tilt slab apartment blocks is changing the local character forever.
First of all they disconnected the power lines from the street. Then the foundations were carefully dismantled and these clever hydraulic truck trailers (a sort of Chev Impala lowrider re-interpretation of a Kenworth trailer) are positioned underneath. The chimneys are dismantled, and away they go – in the middle of the night of course – because you can’t go driving houses around in peak hour traffic can you!
I’ve drawn a number of these places over the years, here’s one just a block away, also ici et ici, and I’m aware of several others set to go also. Auckland City repeatedly tell us they are working hard to protect
Auckland’s heritage but they continue to cave in to the developers
dollar every time.
