Fire always threatened colonial towns, where the mix of wooden buildings and dry summer spells could be an explosive combination. Local authorities struggled to supply adequate amounts of pressurised water and 19th-century New Zealand suffered many great fires. In the late 1880’s the Invercargill Borough Council decided to build a water tower on part of the green belt. Ratepayers wanted the tower but not on the town belt, so architect-engineer William Sharp suggested blunting criticism by disguising the 300,000-litre steel tank with an elaborate brick tower. There were still a few ‘croakers’, but not enough to stop the foundation-laying ceremony on the 18th of December 1888.

Twelve months’ work and 200,000 common bricks, 80,000 red pressed bricks, 15,000 yellow pressed bricks & 4,000 pressed black bricks gave Invercargill a 131-foot-high tower is topped with a water tank that holds 78,459 gallons. The cupola was dismantled in 1934 but recreated in replica in 1989 - with the assistance of NZ Aluminium Smelters, when the polychromatic brickwork was restored, taking the old tower into its second century. 

Opposite we could see the fountains of Queens Park and the sign for the information Centre. In we turned.

Passing Burt Munro who has a splendid statue here.

The World’s Fastest Indian is a popular hero of the city.

Another downpour as we sat outside the gates to Queens Park.

The Museum with a statue of a Tuatara.

Today. Four point seven degrees feels like zero in the freezing thirty mile an hour wind. The weatherman said four layers of clothing and one windproof layer.

Tonight. Showers with hail, risk squally thunder, with gusts to fifty miles an hour.

Overnight. Zero. Squalls.

Tomorrow. Showers wintry at first, south-westerly gusts to sixty miles an hour.

Perhaps a day in catching up on blogs then.