A Santa Fe-style hacienda in Horowhenua, which once housed 160 vintage motorcycles, has hit the market for sale.
Wilton & Co listing agent Suzanne Cottle told OneRoof that 15 Waitarere Beach Road, in Waitarere, frequently catches the eye of holidaymakers as they drive past, heading for the beach. “Everyone who drives past it wonders what it’s like inside. It has a real mystique,” she said.
The three-bedroom home, which sits on a lifestyle 2310sqm section and has an RV of just over $1 million, is owned by motorcycle collector and caravan legend Alton Harrison and his wife Leah. Son Darren, who built the home 20 years ago, said his dad collected all things American, and should by rights have been an American himself.
“The history [of the house] is my parents always liked Santa Fe-style homes and I did too. We had a local guy design it and just went ahead and built it,” Darren told OneRoof.
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“My father’s always been a motorcycle and car guy and he had [The Hub] museum built next door. It was quite a cool museum.”
The Hub closed after Alton and Leah started getting older and found it was too much work. The section housing the museum was subdivided off and sold as a private residence.
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Alton, who is now living in residential care, has sold almost all of his motorcycles to other collectors but he has held onto his favourites, which are stored in the “Coffee Lounge”, said Darren. The room also houses a genuine Wurlitzer jukebox, an antique bowser petrol pump, antique signs, and other memorabilia from Alton’s collection.
Darren kept an Indian Sports Scout motorcycle himself, although a different model to the one that Kiwi Burt Munro famously set the world land speed record on.
Darren said unlike most plaster houses, his parents’ home was not monolithic. It has a timber frame, covered in netting, and then 25ml concrete over the top, he said.
The plastering was done by Darren’s father-in-law, an old-school plasterer. “On the inside, the colours were in the plaster, with sand, so it looks authentic,” Darren told OneRoof.
The property, which sits on a 2310sqm lifestyle block, looks as if it belongs in America's Old West. Photo / Supplied
The Santa Fe-style hacienda was built more than 20 years ago. Photo / Supplied
The family sourced recycled materials from several historic sites, including huge timber from the Levin Racecourse grandstand and the Pātea Hospital maternity block. “There are a lot of nice old timbers in the home and a lot of the doors are re-salvaged,” Darren said.
Other special features include stained glass windows.
Darren said the build was unusual but it wasn’t a first for him. “I don’t do normal houses. I’m actually turning a hay shed into a house at the moment. It’s a nightmare,” he said.
His own neighbours’ heads turned when he had the two remaining stories of a three-storey forestry lookout tower craned onto the front of his own Waitarere Beach property several years back. “I wouldn’t do it again,” he said.
“It actually came out of the Waitarere Forest some time ago and it was shifted to a demolition yard, and I kept driving past, thinking ‘hmmmm’.
“The bottom storey went missing in its life at the demo yard. So, I had to rebuild the bottom storey to match the two top stories. I started with driven piles, most of them are six metres deep. And then a concrete pad on top and proceeded to build the bottom story.”
The "Coffee Lounge" houses the owner's Americana collection. Photo / Supplied
His biggest worry was that the top two floors wouldn’t fit on top of the new bottom story. “Every neighbour was watching, and it had to fit together,” he said.
Darren told OneRoof his father was one of the leading names in New Zealand caravaning, helping to establish the Oxford and Pioneer caravans. Most Kiwis who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s will know them well and may well have holidayed in them. The retro caravans are now collector’s items, and many have been restored over the years.
Alton told media in 2013 that he had vowed never to vote National again after 1979 when the then prime minister, Robert Muldoon, imposed a sales tax on caravans, which Alton said all but killed the local caravan industry.
- 15 Waitarere Beach Road, in Waitarere, Horowhenua, is for sale, deadline closing July 18
