NZ: Wairakei Resort GC back after Cyclone damage
Wairakei Resort
The recent re-opening of the popular public golf course at Wairakei Resort Taupō is something of a triumph for the facility’s owners.
The picturesque course was seriously damaged after Cyclone Gabrielle last year. Hundreds of mature pines and other trees were snapped like twigs, and an earth and pumice slip down one flank of the surrounding hills left the owners facing extensive and long-term restoration work.
Making matters worse was that damage to the water supply across the road at the Wairakei Resort itself meant all normal activity had to be halted, leaving a trail of cancelled conferences and events stretching out months.
Singapore-based Kevin Peeris, senior vice-president of the complex’s owner, Bayview International Hotels & Resorts, was back in Taupō last week for the first time since Cyclone Gabrielle.
He was supposed to be here just as the storm hit last February, but those plans had to be scuppered.
Peeris said he was relieved to see the 75ha facility back to its flawless state.
“Our resort was devastated, particularly on the golf course side, and because we didn’t know how long it would take for us to get up and running again, we took the decision to close. It was a very worrying time.”
With capacity to host conferences and events of up to 500 people, the resort is considered one of the biggest conference and banqueting spaces in Taupō.
One of the first post-cyclone jobs, and one that was particularly painstaking, was to isolate the areas of critical damage to the water supply, resort manager David Hopcroft said.
We had to start from scratch. Because all our piping is all underground, we had to dig to investigate, and that took time. We couldn’t consider re-opening the resort until the water issues were fixed and the grounds put back to the way they were before the cyclone,” Hopcroft said.
In the meantime, the damaged golf course was facing different challenges.
Just logging the damaged trees took about four months, while clearing the slip was another time-consuming task. Then came the job of replanting: the team put in roughly 2600 radiata pines to replace the downed trees.
“We made sure we took our time. It was very important to us that the course be restored to an acceptable standard, and we’ve achieved that,” Peeris said.
Each of the nine holes is designed with two tee-boxes, which offers players the opportunity to go around the course twice without playing an identical shot.
The storm-damaged area has been replaced with astroturf, making the courts ideal for multiple sports and adding an additional drawcard to the resort’s facilities.
