Many of the bicycles on the fence opposite the Ōpārau Roadhouse are showing signs of having spent a couple of decades in the weather.
Once an international tourist attraction at Ōpārau, the bicycles on the fence opposite the roadhouse are now described as “looking tacky” by Kāwhia Community Board member Dave Walsh, and he wants them tidied up.
“They are looking tacky and rusted and are falling off and there’s no weed spraying,” he said at a recent community board meeting.
When board chair Geoff Goode asked if there was a general feeling that the roadside bikes were untidy, Dave said: “You can see it every time you drive past. Bits are falling off some of the frames; the weeds are higher than the bikes.”
The bikes began arriving two or three decades ago, when Bill and Brenda Rogers were in the process of building and developing the roadhouse business at Ōpārau.
Today there are several hundred bikes festooned along the roadside fence opposite the roadhouse.
Bill Rogers said the bikes were put there to slow the traffic down the hill.
When the council planning staff originally looked at the site for the roadhouse, the traffic count was 100 vehicles a day with one in 10 stopping at the roadhouse.
Unless there was an attraction there or something that would draw people in, that’s all you are going to get into the place, he said.
“At the time when we first started out, all our advertising was to do with Kāwhia.
“Advertising fishing contests, whatever was on, we used to advertise that [to] get more traffic through and also get our name out there.
“So, it sort of went from there. We ended up collecting a few bikes, when we got quite a few we started putting them on the fence for decoration. Transit (now Waka Kotahi) came along and said you can’t do that; said it was going to cause a traffic hazard.”
They had permission from the owner of the land at the time and Bill volunteered to put the bikes on the other side of the fence.
That was the last he heard from Transit.
“We built up quite a collection. We used to get a lot of people from Holland, we even had one e-mail from Russia wanting to know about camping. He wanted to see the bikes on the fence. It was well known around the world at one time.”
Remember the show Havoc and Newsboy (Jeremy Wells) in the late 1990s? The sister of the show’s producer returned from England with a bunch of tourism brochures, one of which featured the Ōpārau Roadhouse and the bikes on the fence. The producer rang Bill and dragged Havoc and Newsboy to Kāwhia.
“They stayed at our place, and we fed them. We had accommodation in the houses next door. So, it sort of featured on TV in their programme,” Bill said.
“We all featured in it, and the hot springs, and the white sands, and all that jazz. It brought a lot of people out here, and a lot of people into our shop.”
Most of the bikes have a story to tell. Children used to ask if they could put their old bikes on the fence when they grew into larger bikes.
One of the old racing bikes was donated by a man who used to regularly ride out to Kāwhia. It was still useable when it was put on the fence, Bill said.
“We could have got bikes from anywhere and just dumped them up there, but I felt it had to have a bit of a purpose to go there.”
And it worked. The tourists would slow down when they came over the top of the hill and saw the line of bikes along the fence down past the roadhouse.
“You would see them go down the road, turn around and come back, park up. Some would come into the shop and a lot of them took photos.”
If it was all tidied up and some of the rusty bikes replaced, it would look quite attractive again, he said.
He added that Ōpārau was outside the Kāwhia Community Board jurisdiction. The relevant authority was the Ōtorohanga District Council, which did not own the highway – that was Waka Kotahi.
Repeated attempts were made to contact the current roadhouse owners.
