On the fringes of Auckland city, the Waitakere ranges create a dense ring of bush that separates the quiet hum of suburbia from the atmospheric iron ore beaches and Tasman Sea. It’s here that you’ll find Kordia’s Waiatarua transmission tower, rising above the tree line into the Western horizon.
The Waiatarua site is Auckland’s best kept secret when it comes to stunning views. From the transmission hall windows, the panorama spans from Manukau Harbour, across the sprawling southern and western suburbs, over to the North Shore. On a fine day, you can even see the Hauraki gulf islands and Coromandel glistening in the distance.
Waiatarua was one of the very first of a series of large lattice towers, built as part a nationwide TV strategy initiated by Kordia predecessor, the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation (NZBC). Using a network of microwave links across the country, the NZBC was able to introduce simultaneous telecasting of news, sport and other programmes throughout the whole country. Amongst the first such links were those established between the transmitter at Waiatarua and the repeater station at Te Aroha. This enabled TV coverage for regional areas in the central North Island, comparable to that in major cities.
Construction started on the Waiatarua tower in early 1964. Built in just 3 and a half weeks by an Australian crew of 9 riggers, the tower structure utilised an estimated 75 tonnes of steel. Originally 122m tall, its height distributed the signal that brought television to the vast majority of Aucklanders, delivered by the state-of-the-art Marconi 625 line TV transmitter.
The site and building design were influenced by NZBC engineer Sid Edwards, who drew on his experience working for the BBC. Typical of its era, the buildings featured a brutalist, precast concrete construction, with function taking precedent over form. Robust enough to withstand weather conditions atop the exposed peak, the walls, ceilings and floors of critical areas within the building were lined with two layers of galvanised steel sheet to shield the equipment from any outside electrical interference.
The dominant feature of the building was its transmission hall – measuring 9.9 m by 29.9m (296m2), with a 3.8m stud. It is said Mr Edwards had convinced the government to invest in a design to accommodate two transmitters, thus future proofing the sites for the addition of later channels such as TV2 – which arrived in the 1970s.
John McCallum, Infrastructure and Colocation Specialist based in Auckland, knows the tower well. He says that even today, a lot of work goes into ensuring the site is resilient.
“We put a lot of effort into protecting the infrastructure and assets located at Waiatarua, such as preventing lightning energy from getting into the building and impacting equipment. We have earthing systems of which the tower is an integral part. If the tower is struck by lightning, there are steel and copper strips running from the legs of the towers out radially around the site that helps dissipate the energy into the ground.”
Although before his time, John says the tower would have been a hive of activity back in those early days.
“The transmitters used valve technology, and while inherently reliable, this needed a lot of maintenance and on-going adjustment. That’s why in those days the site was manned by trained technicians during all transmission hours. I believe this was the case right into the 1990s.”
The switch from analogue TV to digital in 2013 freed up a lot of the space in the buildings.
“As the technology evolved, digital transmitters took up a lot less space. Today the DTT equipment can fit into one room, as opposed to taking up an entire transmission hall.”
Today, the tower at Waiatarua still transmits Digital Terrestrial TV to the greater Auckland region, covering an area spanning from the Bombays to Brynderwyns. However, Kordia now supports other organisations at the site with additional connectivity and communications services.
“At Waiatarua, we have a range of services on the tower – DTT, Microwave linking, and services for critical customers like Airways, Coastguard, Maritime NZ and the emergency services. We also help smaller businesses, like third tier ISPs, telcos and councils leverage the site for their networks.”
John’s role focuses on helping other customers co-locate at Waiatarua, and other Kordia sites.
“Our sites provide great coverage for other services, as the network was designed for national coverage. In my current role, I help other organisations leverage our infrastructure for their networks – what we call co-location.”
“I work with a team of experts who look at our structures to see if there is capacity to host additional services. Then I run it past our structural, electrical and radio engineers who help check the capacity of the site infrastructure, assist with the design, and plan the installation.”
“As owners of the tower, it’s our own field team that handle the installation and maintenance of co-located equipment of the tower. We have a lot of knowledge and technicians on hand to provide that service to customers to ensure their services operate smoothly.”
John says that over the past 60 years the way broadcasting services are delivered has changed, but the value to the community remains the same. Across Kordia’s network of sites, DTT is available to nearly 87% of New Zealand’s landmass, enabled by a network of over 200 sites owned, operated and maintained by Kordia.
“Today, Kordia’s field team look after all the regional sites, but when I was a kid growing up in the Eastern Bay of Plenty, community groups used to take an active part in maintaining small repeater sites that provided access to free to air TV.”
“I remember going to the local repeater site with the father of one of my friends, a community volunteer who was doing some maintenance. I was around nine years old, and what fascinated me was seeing this guy tuning the antenna by hacking bits off it with a hacksaw! It blew me away because you had this esoteric scientific stuff being manipulated by something as mundane as cutting off a piece of the antenna. That was my first exposure into broadcast networks, and now that I work so closely with this technology at scale on sites like Waiatarua, it’s funny to reminisce how far we’ve come today.”
Did you work on or have memories, photos or stories to share about Kordia's towers? We'd love to hear from you. Please contact Sally Vernon, Head of Communications at Kordia - sally.vernon@kordia.co.nz
