Northland power outage: A fallen pylon put Glorit on the map

On a Thursday afternoon near the end of June, the nation learned about a small rural area called Glorit when a power pylon fell over there, cutting off electricity to Northland.

The transmission tower toppled over after contractors removed too many bolts while they were cleaning the base.

Curious about a town he had not heard of, RNZ First Up reporter Leonard Powell drove north-west of Auckland to investigate.

"I actually got a phone call from my farm worker and he's like, oh, sh**, guess what's happened... There's a pylon down on the farm. And from where I was, I could actually look through the farm and see where it was, and it was just like woah," Glorit farmer Shane Hood told First Up, describing the moment the power went out.

At the Kaipara Coast Plant Centre and Sculpture Gardens, gardener Sarah Rogers said she was unwittingly driving into the Northland power outage when the pylon fell.

"Got to bach, no power. So we'd left a house with power, to no power, and had to zip over to the Whananaki dairy, which involves a walk over a long bridge, and got ice and candles. Then I think about 7pm that night it came back on. So we weren't roughing it for too long."

Fifteen kilometres up the road sits Glorit Hall and behind it lies the remnants of the toppled tower.

Nearby is the historic Mataia Homestead, owned by farmer Shane Hood and his family.

The day the pylon fell, Hood was at home sick with his wife and daughter.

"I was actually lying in bed. And I did hear a crash, but we have a silica sand washing plant on the farm and I just assumed it was some bit of machinery or something crashing about down there. Then my daughter came in and said 'we've got no power', I was like don't worry it'll be on soon, because it was a bit of a windy day, and then I was just lying there thinking... I did hear that big crash."

Hood's wife Jenny said the situation was apocalyptic.

"He came home and said 'there's a pylon fallen over', and I was like 'oh whatever'. He said 'jump in the car we'll go have a look', so we did a bit of disaster tourism and went for a drive. At that stage the workers were walking around with stunned looks on their faces, looking quite freaked out."

She said the incident has put the small community of around 200 residents on the map.

"I think when it first came out on the media, it said that it was in Kumeu. So it's been a bit of a running joke on the Glorit Facebook page that we're now called Kumeu."

Jenny said Gibbs Farm is the easiest landmark when people ask where Glorit is. Owned by businessman Alan Gibbs, it was a sculpture park with a series of major artworks.

"Before Gibbs Farm became what it was, we used to say we live between Helensville and Wellsford. It's a blink-and-you-miss-it town. And that's about it."

She is right. No dairy. No petrol station. Just the Glorit War Memorial Hall, which is the only establishment in Glorit.

"They used to have some amazing parties up there... I just remember, five years old, running around and and sneaking bottles of fizzy drink and thinking it was the best thing since sliced bread."

Jenny's mother, Gill Adshead, has family ties to Glorit dating back to the 1800s.

She grew up in the historic Mataia homestead, which was built in 1891. Nowadays it is rented out as holiday accommodation.

"The grandchildren are seventh generation, so the farm's been in the family for seven generations basically. 1868, the first tupuna came here.

"They settled here and they called the place Glorat. But when my great grandfather, who was Scottish, went down to register the place name, it was very broad Scotch... And it was written down as Glorit."

Like her daughter Jenny, Gill Adshead's eyes light up thinking back on fond memories of the local hall.

"My father loved films, so for a while when I was young, it was run as a movie theatre. Every Saturday night we had corned beef for dinner and then we went up to the hall and we watched movies.

"I think there was this fantastic series of a guy on a horse. The horse's name was Silver. And we used to sit on the front and bounce up and down. It was so exciting.

"And Mum used to sell fizzy drinks and things, like a little candy bar. So that's my fondest memory of the hall. It was amazing.

She said the community had changed a lot since then. Glorit was not as isolated as it once was, or as prosperous.

"In the '80s, farming took a huge downturn, so a lot of the farms that were marginal then subdivided into smaller blocks.

"A lot of the people that live here now commute and work in places like Silverdale and Albany. They're only 30 minutes away."

Nowadays, Gill and her husband Kevin spend their time nurturing a growing population of kiwis.

"2006 we pulled out all the stops and started all the pest control. And then in 2011, somebody came and said, 'you could release kiwi here if you wanted to, because your pest control is so good'.

"We hadn't even thought about it. We thought, well, why not? So in 2013, we released 10 kiwi and the following year 10 more and the following year 20.

"So 40 were released in those three years. They're awesome. Last night I was out with the torch and one was puttering around on my back lawn, so that was lovely.

"We realised if we were going to have a self-sustaining population of kiwi we needed 10,000 hectares. The farm's 1300 hectares, so we needed a lot more. So we went out and talked to a whole lot of people and we developed a thing called the Forest Bridge Trust, which has developed into this big conservation project."

The group's vision is to create a connected landscape of healthy forest and indigenous wildlife from the Kaipara Harbour in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east.

As for the farm, Shane and Jenny Hood were relieved no one got hurt when the tower fell.

Shane hoped the surrounding paddocks, out of action because of construction, would soon be back in action for his sheep and cattle.