High above the hills in Wellington, standing guard over the city, is the Kordia owned Kaukau television tower – a steel structure rising above the northern suburbs surrounding Mt Kaukau to a whopping 100 metres above ground level. With its base almost half a kilometre above sea level, the tower is Wellington’s highest point.
Built in 1965, this year the Kaukau tower celebrates its 60th anniversary – a milestone closely linked to the advent of free to air TV broadcasting in New Zealand.
The Kaukau site, along with four other lattice towers built in 1965 (Sugarloaf, Wharite and Waiatarua), were the first structures of their kind in New Zealand, commissioned as part of a government initiative to create national television coverage.
Throughout the 60s and 70s, around 50 high sites were built – as well as hundreds of smaller repeater sites that would bring TV signals to rural communities. As a result, TV viewership grew from a few thousand in Auckland in the early 60s to almost 90% of the population.
Today Kaukau and its sister sites are owned by Kordia – an organisation that evolved from the former New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation. NZBC initiated the build programme and brought TV to the masses, as the predecessor to TVNZ, RNZ and Kordia.
While television is broadcast quite differently today, the towers still function to deliver digital terrestrial TV transmission, as well as other services such as FM radio, Kordia’s digital microwave network and emergency services radio communications.
Dave Hughes, who has worked at Kordia since the early 70s, is familiar with the tower at Kaukau after many years working in the capital. He recalls that as TV was so new, there wasn’t anyone in New Zealand with the knowledge or skill to build the infrastructure required. International crews from Japan and Italy were brought in to build the first few towers.
“There are some legendary stories about the tower at Kaukau being built. The Japanese crew would start work at the crack of dawn and wouldn't come down from the tower until it was getting dark. They’d eat lunch up there. Quite a different work ethic.”
Back in the beginning, the site of Kaukau was manned by a crew of at least ten people, working in shifts to ensure the transmission, 365 days a year.
As analogue television signals relied on line of sight, the tower needed to be built high enough to be visible across the whole of the Wellington metro region – but also needed to be robust enough to withstand Wellington’s infamous winds.
One of the early tests of resilience was the storm in 1968, the same that saw the Wahine sink in Wellington harbour.
“I understand they recorded a windspeed on the tower of about 225km per hour before the anemometer on the tower disintegrated. The tower was structurally fine, and although some antennas were damaged, there was still broadcast capability on site.”
“Very seldom did we lose services due to weather events. Our sites are remarkably resilient, but we also have teams located around the country who can be on site quickly to address any faults or issues. The first course of action after a big weather event is to get our field team onto the site and check everything out to make sure that all of the equipment on the towers is working as it should.”
Over the subsequent years NZBC’s team of engineers, technicians and riggers became experts in designing, building, and maintaining broadcasting infrastructure (for both radio and TV). When the Te Aroha tower was replaced in the late 1980’s, the design and build was all done by local inhouse Kiwi expertise. Today, there are still many people working at Kordia who worked on or helped build and design some of the sites. Dave says that knowledge has seen Kordia become a world class expert in critical broadcasting infrastructure.
“We had built up this deep expertise and from that we were able to evolve a consultancy practice where we could help other businesses and governments with the design, build and maintenance of their critical communications networks.”
He points to Kordia’s involvement supporting the introduction of TV3 in New Zealand, as well as ongoing work in the Pacific region as examples.
“We’ve been doing a lot of work building AM radio infrastructure in Vanuatu and Samoa over the past 10 years or so, and recently we helped restore broadcast radio services after the December Port Vila earthquake in Vanuatu.”
60 years on, the Kaukau tower still stands proud along the Wellington skyline with sweeping views across the city and harbour, Remutaka and Tararua Ranges, the Porirua basin and the Tasman Sea. On a clear day, you might even spy as far south as Mount Tapuae-o-Uenuku in the Kaikōura Ranges.
The tower is slightly shorter today than it was in the 1960s. In 2022, 18m of the tower was removed as part of remedial work on the tower. With analogue transmission switched off in 2013, the tower no longer needed the additional height to send out signals. Removing the redundant top section, along with work replacing aging bolts and repainting, is all part of Kordia’s ongoing work to ensure the tower at Kaukau is in top shape for decades to come.
Did you work on or have memories, photos or stories to share about the Mt Kaukau tower? We'd love to hear from you. Please contact Sally Vernon, Head of Communications at Kordia - sally.vernon@kordia.co.nz
