The end of the world
It’s important to share your emotions.
Every day, I can’t help marvelling at this place.
From the editor Dan Hutchinson
OPINION: While the rest of the planet worries about war, famine, and coastal erosion, we sit in our naturally-heated hot tubs and simmer away in a giant caldera, waiting for the big boom, or the big Boom Boom, whatever comes first.
As luck would have it Boom Boom did arrive first, along with an eruption of emotions; anger, love and confusion.
What a lot of visitors don’t understand is that Taupōdlians don’t really like being reminded of the molten rock in our subterranean bits, so the extinction reference is a bit insensitive.
An angry T-Rex on the corner of Spa Rd and Titiraupenga St would have been more appropriate, but let’s not go there.
Controversial dinosaur sculptures are actually quite common, and I’ve hunted down a few examples to help ease any feelings of unnatural disaster.
A quick online search reveals the first 10 examples of controversial dinosaur sculptures, are all Boom Boom, including articles in the BBC, Radio NZ, NZ Herald, Stuff etc.
However, beneath Boom Boom’s intense media spotlight, there is few other examples to lean on, including a much shorter dinosaur at Granby High School in Colarado.
This statue was actually completely free, a donation, however it was adorned with resplendant rainbow-coloured feathers.
Some complained about what they thought was a homosexual dinosaur, and after a few year the school authorities relented to the conservastive onslaught. It was painted blue, with a red sash around it, so there was no confusion.
Boom Boom arrives in Taupō. Photo / Dan Hutchinson
There has been a lot of a backlash around this, from students, and others intolerant to intolerance, but to this day the nameless dinosaur remains trapped in a heterosexual paint job, albeit with a lovely red sash.
The world’s first dinosaur park was built at Crystal Palace near London by natural history artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins in 1854.
Dinosaurs were still a relatively new discovery and there weren’t many examples of complete fossils to go on.
The park featured the first three types of dinosaurs to be discovered: Megalosaurus, Hylaeosaurus and Iguanodons.
These life-sized replicas still stand there today, but their appearance is somewhat different to what more recent discoveries have revealed.
They look a lot like big four-legged lizards and crocodiles, because the idea of such a massive creature roaming around on two big legs seemed unlikely.
Drumheller, in Alberta Canada, claims the world’s largest dinosaur sculpture - a 25-metre T-Rex called Tyra.
Drumheller considers itself the ‘Dinosaur Capital of the World’. Tyra has 108 steps, and 12 people can fit in its mouth at the same time. It cost NZ$1.3 million to build back in 2000.
Taupō has never really been high on the list of dinosaur hot-spots, until now, but Palaeontologists know there were at least six different species of dinosaur living in Zealandia when it broke away from Gondwanaland about 95 million years ago, including sauropods like Boom Boom.
The Central Plateau does have its share of dinosaur enthusiasts however and a trip to the Dinosaur Museum in Raetihi is on my list of things to do next time I go there.
There are another two sculptures expected to join Boom Boom over the coming year and altogether there are meant to be 24 different works of art.
While the first one gained a 50% subsidy courtesy of ratepayers, the remaining ones will have to stand on their own two feet, or flippers as the case may be.
We’ll just have to wait and see.
dan@tauponews.co.nz