Braving the bog for a comfort stop

CRAIG SIMCOX/The Dominion Post

YOU'D NEED TO BE DESPERATE: The quagmire around the Mt Victoria lookout toilets. The graffiti has been cleared, but the mud remains.

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A bog of mud and water surrounding the toilets near Wellington's Mt Victoria lookout has drawn complaints from the public.

The toilets opened last year on the corner of Alexandra and Lookout roads after a $1 million upgrade of the Mt Victoria summit by Wellington City Council.

But the state of the ground yesterday made a visit to the two-toilet cubicle more suitable for mud wrestling than tourist comfort stops, Wellington walker Rosamund Averton said.

"They are built in the wrong place. When it rains, there is a river that comes down and there is mud everywhere. It is not a very nice experience using them."

Ms Averton has helped the council review the state of its 65 public toilet sites across the city.

"That goes back to a 2002 review paper that the council called the Lavatory Paper."

Tourist bus operator Wally Hammond has run Wellington sightseeing tours for the past 50 years but does not take his passengers to use the Mt Victoria toilets.

"Maybe I would in the summer, but definitely not in the winter."

The council needed to concrete the area around the toilets to make access safer for his passengers, who were sometimes elderly.

"That would certainly help, for sure," he said.

Council spokesman Richard MacLean blamed the muddy conditions on an unusually wet winter coupled with tour coach operators driving too close to the toilets and churning up the ground.

"But $70,000 worth of work is to start next month. Tenders have already closed so, ironically, we are waiting for drier conditions."

Concrete and pavers would be used around the toilet block, ready for the start of the summer tourist season.

The stainless steel exterior of the vandal-resistant toilets was tagged with graffiti when The Dominion Post visited them yesterday morning.

The bright graffiti had been removed by the council by the time a reporter returned two hours later.

- © Fairfax NZ News