‘Welcome to Mataura?’ A town’s 12-year wait for a sign

Alan Taylor hopes 2022 will be the year visitors receive a more welcoming welcome to Mataura.

Since 2009, the Mataura Community Board and the Gore District Council have planned to replace the signs at the entrances to the southern town.

Mataura runs along State Highway 1, and the signs at each end of the town were called ‘’something of an embarrassment’’ in a council report back in 2018.

Taylor, the Mataura Community Board chairman, said: “This could be the year we get new ones. We’re certainly well on the way.”

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“We’re in the process of getting consents from the NZTA, although the council has approved the sign and given its consent.’’

Taylor said he didn’t know why it had taken so long for Mataura to get its new signs.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in local government it’s that nothing happens quickly,’’ he said.

“It was first talked about before Gore went for it’s GoRe campaign [the town was branded with the ‘Rural City Living’ tagline in 2014] because the community thought Mataura had its own identity and there were some reservations that the GoRe campaign would be used here. We’re all part of the same Gore district, but Mataura is definitely its own town.’’

Stuff visited Mataura to talk to some of the town’s residents about the signs and those spoken to either hadn’t noticed the old ones, or didn’t care about replacements.

“The best ‘M’ they could put at the entrance to Mataura would be the golden arches, so I don’t have to go to Gore to get my McDonalds,’’ one said.

Gore District Council roading asset manager Peter Standring, who is working with the board on the signs, says he’ll be taking updated definitive costs back to the board soon and needs to get approval from Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency.

Standring believes the signs could be up by July.

The council released ideas for new town signage in 2019 – but for a far different design.

The council proposed erecting a large red and black ‘M’ at the town’s entrances in 2019, an idea that didn’t get off the ground because of Mongrel Mob connotations.

The council also proposed putting a “G” at the entrance to Gore, a “P” at the entrance to Pukerau and a “W” at the entrance to Waikaka, but those plans were shelved.

Since then the Mataura Community Board has consulted with the public and come up with a new design, which he hopes will be in place in a few months’ time.

“We’ve had good feedback about it because I think the people had a say in what was on it and they’ve had a bit of input to it.’’

The council had identified that it needed to replace the signs in 2009. Since then the project had been profiled in asset management plans with funding flagged in its 10 Year Plans.

After grappling over the design of entrance way signage for the Gore township, they were finally replaced in 2020.

One features a fly fisherman on the Mataura river, despite a council staffer emailing a Wellington-based designer in 2017 to say ‘’we do not want the sign to reinforce the popular definitions of Gore as the capital of trout fishing and country music, or our hokonui moonshine history.’’

Since then the council has held a trout fishing festival on the banks of the Mataura River, hosted its first Tussock Country music festival on the back of the success of the NZ Gold Guitar Awards, and opened a moonshine distillery to the public in a revamped museum.

The brief changed as the billboard option chosen provided the best canvas for some of the district’s iconic images, Standring said.