The roof is lifted on to the Whangārei Rolling Ball Clock at the Town Basin on Tuesday morning. Photo / Tania Whyte
The roof is lifted on to the Whangārei Rolling Ball Clock at the Town Basin on Tuesday morning. Photo / Tania Whyte
Fourteen years of hard work and dedication has finally paid off for a group of Whangārei folk who were determined to add a unique project to the Town Basin.
Today that commitment came to fruition when the Whangārei Rolling Ball Clock was finally lifted into place, next to the Clapham Clock Museum.
Culham engineering started the operation around 5.30am after the rolling ball clock was trucked from Absolute Stainless, where it has been under construction for the past two years.
The project was the brainchild of the About Time Team, a group of volunteers who had a vision and were determined to do what it took to make it happen.
As dawn broke today many of the team were on hand to watch the structure take it's spot at the Town Basin.
About Time Team project manager Warren Thomas said it was a relief to finally see the ball clock lifted into place.
''It started in 2008 and there has been thousands and thousands of hours put into the project by the About Time Team. We had to convince the council it was a worthwhile project.
Henk Oosterbrook, Sue Mehrtens, Pete Romer, Roger Reynolds, Lloyd Bushby, Adam Gillespie, Jan Ahlers, Warren Thomas, Reg Shaw and Phillip Hetaraka from the About Time Team and Absolute Stainless
''Then we got the Provincial Growth Fund money and that was the catalyst really.''
Funding came from a Provincial Growth Fund grant of $750,000, plus $110,000 from Whangārei District Council Community Funding and About Time committee's own fundraising of $100,000. Donations, labour and gifted materials came to $75,000.
Thomas said there had been a few hiccups along the way.
''It's been operational since June last year, but there have been a few things we've had to work out. Things like ball behaviour. Dust can affect how the balls run and then there's the ball's elasticity and the impact when they hit and bounce back. There are so many variables that had to be worked out.''
But now that the structure was in place there was nothing but happiness among the team.
From here the structure will be glazed and once complete the clock will run from 9am to 9pm with the first day of public operation at 11am on April 7.
The ball clock is the latest addition to the sculptures around the Town Basin, but this is no static display - it's a fully-functioning timepiece, a clock that displays time by means of balls and rails.
The clock will be gifted to the Whangārei District Council after a short maintenance period to confirm its satisfactory operation.
The Whangārei Rolling Ball Clock is lifted into place at the Town Basin. Photo / Tania Whyte
■ A rolling ball clock is a clock which displays time by means of balls and rails.
The original design of the rolling ball clock has three main rails – two labelled for minutes and one for hours. The bottom rail represents the hours. The middle rail represents the minutes in multiples of 5 or 10 , while the top rail displays the numbers 1 through 4. By adding the displayed values of the two rails one could get an accurate measurement of the minutes.
An electric motor scoops up a ball every minute. Every five minutes, the top rail will dump and deposit a ball on the second rail. Every hour, the upper and middle rails dump and one ball is transferred to the bottom rail to increment the hours. At 1:00 all three rails dump their balls to the feed rail at the bottom.
