Local ‘cone-chuckers’ have been at it for months and don’t seem to be slowing down.
While cones are popping up in random places all over Queenstown’s CBD — including up trees, on roofs and on the top of former America’s Cup yacht NZL14’s mast in Queenstown Bay — one CBD sculpture still seems to be the main attraction.
The number of cones being hiffed into ‘Wakatipu Vessel’, in St Omer Park, is creating serious mahi for council contractors.
The 10-metre-long, stainless steel waka is emptied pretty regularly — almost daily, now, compared to weekly in October — the council says, and while signs warning culprits are being captured on CCTV have recently been erected, no cone-chuckers have yet been identified.
Queenstown council’s media man Sam White says it’s frustrating traffic cones continue to end up in what’s a notable piece of public art, created by Virginia King in 2015, but ‘‘we aren’t about to surround the sculpture with barbed wire and guard dogs’’.
He adds the cones are removed by council contractors as they carry out their other tasks around the CBD, so there’s no ‘cost per cone
removal’, per se.
White says the cones, each weighing about 4.5 kilograms, are returned to their rightful homes after being rescued, but ‘‘if we ever had
to replace them they cost approximately $40 each’’.
