Inspired by the success of a designer dunny in turning a tiny New Zealand town into a tourist mecca, a Queensland community is hoping to make a similar splash.
The Sunshine Coast Council is pressing ahead with plans to build a startlingly bright green and yellow toilet block in the quiet hinterland town of Kenilworth … and it hopes it will bring grey nomads running.
The council says the project – which will cost some $600,000 – should be completed by the end of the year.
Cr Greg Rogerson said it will provide a major boost for the town.
“Once we get the amenity block up and running, every caravan and grey nomad book in Australia will be writing about it,” he said. “It will put Kenilworth on the map.”
Cr Rogerson told the ABC that the idea for a feature toilet block came from a meeting with the Sunshine Coast Creative Alliance about five years ago as they saw a need to put a sculpture in the Kenilworth park.
“The park had a gazebo and barbecues and then someone said ‘why don’t you think about a toilet’,” he said. “Kenilworth is an art town … we held a community meeting and someone said out of the blue, ‘why don’t you make the sculpture the amenity’.”
Apparently, the inspiration for the distinctive dunny originally came from a similarly eye-catching toilet that was built a couple of decades ago in the remote New Zealand town of Kawakawa.
Architect Friedesreich Hundertwasser built the iconic amenities block after he moved to the North Island community to retire … and it now attracts around 250,000 tourists a year!
Its a really nice part of the country, bring it on!
Not too fussed how fancy the toilets are. From a practical point of view, money would be better spent on more public toilets that are well maintained and cleaned regularly.