Open-air skating on Napier's Marine Parade

The opening of the Napier's Marine Parade skating rink on December 3, 1955. Photo/Lou Klinkhamer

After the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake caused an uplift of land on the foreshore of Napier's Marine Parade, an open-air, concrete roller skating rink was built e around 1933 in front of the present Soundshell. It was here that the Napier Skating Club, which is 70 years old this year, was formed on September 21, 1937.

While the open-air skating rink proved very popular, there was a need for a purpose-built facility with a smoother surface for the Napier Skating Club.

Napier's influential Thirty Thousand Club lent its support to public fundraising, and the Napier City Council provided a 20-year loan to the Napier Skating Club as well as a lease of a Marine Parade site (next to the now Sunken Gardens).

The new Marine Parade skating rink was opened on December 3, 1955, with around 2000 spectators and 300 skaters taking part.

A symbolic march took place from the Soundshell skating rink area to the new rink.

Mayor Mr E.R. Spriggs mentioned during the official proceedings that it was the best facility of its kind in New Zealand.

Mr F.W. Browne, of the Thirty Thousand Club, spoke of the Napier Skating Club pioneering open-air skating in New Zealand. He said the new rink's surface was pre-stressed concrete, and the only one of its kind in the country.

It was hoped that four members of the New Zealand skating team travelling back from the world roller skating championships in Barcelona would attend the skating rink opening. They were due to land at Auckland at 4.30pm on opening day, and would fly to Napier on a specially chartered amphibious plane.

The four coming were 15-year-old Miss Valerie Whyte (then the New Zealand Open Champion), Miss O. Plowman (manager/coach), and Mrs K. Whyte of Napier, and Mr J. Baker, Palmerston North.

This was the first time a New Zealand roller skating team had competed overseas. Unfortunately, their plane was delayed, and they missed the opening. When the rink was declared open, the rink's lights went out and sky rockets were launched from the beach, in a brief but spectacular display.

At the opening was 15-year old Hastings School boy Lou Klinkhamer (pictured centre, tallest with dark blazer).

Lou had played ice hockey in Holland in The Hague, but had a slight problem with no ice here. So, in 1953, he went to see the president of the Windsor Park Skating Club in Hastings to inquire if a roller hockey team could be started there. "No," he was told as it "would damage the concrete".

The group who would form the roller hockey team went and saw Jack Charters Sports, who made them special double-sided flat hockey sticks (like ice hockey ones) and they would use a cricket ball instead of a flat, rubber ice hockey puck.

New Zealand's first roller hockey team began playing on Monday nights (at that stage the Hastings skating rink was only open on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturdays for roller and speed skating only).

The first team members were Lou and Ted Klinkhamer, Arthur Bott, Brian Williams, Cath Lawry, Ron Butwell, Jasper Wearing, Doug Nightingale, and Larry Griffith. There were five players and a goalie in the team, and the group soon had 12 members - enough to play against each other.

When Napier formed a team, they played against them on Soundshell skating rink on Marine Parade. The Hastings team beat Napier, and soon after they also defeated a Palmerston North team. The Hastings Roller Hockey team could call themselves New Zealand champions after that.

At the opening of the Napier Skating Rink in 1955, the Hastings Roller Hockey team played a demonstration match against Napier, which they beat again.

The Napier Skating Rink, which was renamed Sk8 Zone in 1994, was demolished in 2016. A new facility, constructed by the Napier City Council called Bay Skate opened in December 2016 in the old Marineland premises.

Michael Fowler (mfhistory@gmail.com) is a Chartered Accountant, speaker and writer of history