Dan Mills with daughters Anna and Maria and the mural at the Castlecliff Dairy in Rangiora Street.
Dan Mills with daughters Anna and Maria and the mural at the Castlecliff Dairy in Rangiora Street.
The coastal diversity of Castlecliff now floats by on a shop wall.
Mural maker Dan Mills took inspiration from classic literature to turn a brick wall of the dairy and takeaways into a thing of beauty.
There's a bit of Moby Dick, and the indigenous The Bone People and TheLuminaries, in his work at the Castlecliff Camp Store in the Whanganui seaside suburb.
Mills explains he saw similarities between albatross wings and whale fins and boats when making the piece, with the link between ships and the big sea birds even more defined.
"They are mentioned in The Luminaries as being like ships. The fins of a whale are also like the keel of a ship."
He also made the whale "face"something of a landscape. Barnacles have been turned into the Central Plateau mountains while a line from a whale is the shape of the Whanganui River.
Surfers are towed by whales, or maybe it's the other way round.
Mills was commissioned to paint the mural by Progress Castlecliff, the group leading the Castlecliff Rejuvenation Project.
He talked to committee member Jamie Waugh about the concept. "I had a Castlecliff inspired design knocking around and tweaked that."
Mills has painted plenty of murals before including one in Drews Ave for the Flying Dog Gallery.
He drew a grid first on paper. And photoshopped the concept to give people an idea of what it would look like.
Photograph by Stuart Munro
And then he started painting. Ten litres later it's almost finished.
"It just needs a top coat, which will be another two litres or so."
He started the project on March 25.
He said the project was pretty easy, it didn't need scaffolding and people have been positive about it.
The mural business keeps him busy - including at Easter he worked on a piece for a computer repair company in Lambton Quay Wellington and has another on the go at Billy Graham's boxing gym in Nae Nae.
And dairy owner Frank Yan said the mural has been given the thumbs up by customers but they want more.
"They ask when we are going to do the other [Rangiora St] side."
He has backed the project form the beginning.
"Jamie came and asked me about it and I thought, 'yeah, why not'.
"It's good for the community and very good for us. I completely support it.
"Many customers ask "hey Frank, when's are you going to get the other part done up too?" Mr Yan said. The mural is along the Karaka St side of the dairy.
It is the latest look for the business which has been on the same site since the early 1900s.
