Sculptor bridges an artistic gap

By WAYNE THOMPSON

Karekare sculptor John Edgar has carved his reputation from large pieces of stone, but he eagerly accepted a challenge to try his hand at designing a steel and wooden footbridge for Henderson.

The result is a $180,000, 35m creation over the Oratia Stream linking Falls Park with the Cranwell Reserve on the Henderson walkway.

Edgar's inspiration for the design came after thinking about how Maori of times past might have crossed the waterway.

A fallen kauri tree was the possibility chosen by the artist and is represented in the bridge with its smooth deck of bare wood and steel trusses in green and yellow that poke down towards the river like gaunt branches.

Stone inserts by Edgar blaze the trail across for walkway wanderers, who can rest in a passing bay and hear the tide gurgling over rocks below.

Edgar said the bridge also had a nautical theme - sides laced with wire halyards, a macrocarpa deck and a eucalyptus guard rail - to honour the site's significance to European settlers.

On the stream bank was Henderson's Saw Mill and the Falls Hotel, so named because it was an overnight resting place for Europeans who sailed up the stream from the Waitemata Harbour on excursions to the Waitakere Ranges waterfalls. In 1858 "Shepherd" John McLeod grazed sheep in the delta of the Oratia and Poanuku Streams as manager of the farm at Henderson's Saw Mill. In 1873 he became the first licensee of the Falls Hotel. The footbridge has been named McLeod's Crossing in his honour.

Edgar, who is president of the Waitakere Ranges Protection Society, said he submitted a design to the Waitakere City Council because it was a chance to "defend the principles of the Eco City."

The council received acclaim for the Rewarewa footbridge in New Lynn, designed in 1998 by sculptor Virginia King and her engineer husband Mike.