New Zealand Odyssey: Tudor Towers, Rotorua

'New Zealand Odyssey', published in 1989 by Heinemann, was authored by me, Don Donovan (who did the text and illustrations) and Euan Sarginson, who did the photography and design. In this series of blog posts, I will publish some of my drawings.

This Elizabethan revival has always struck me as one of the weirdest buildings in New Zealand. There couldn't be a better example of English eccentricity overlaid on to a colony twenty thousand kilometres distant. It was opened in 1908 by prime minister Joseph Ward and to make it even weirder, they invited an American admiral to the opening ceremony.

Tudor Towers started life as a government bath house; a spa, making use of Rotorua's abundant, smelly, sulphurous mud effusions. Layer it became a nightclub, restaurant and now it's a museum.

To me, it was a challenging subject to draw; a problem of holding the rigid detail intact while keeping enough freedom not to make the thing look like a front elevation. I enjoyed drawing it, but I still think its weird.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz