A Tauranga teacher is planning on getting a mysterious pole which turned up cemented into her driveway removed.
Sophie Hucker told 1News she arrived home early Tuesday evening and saw a wrapped pole standing in her drive.
She first believed it was a delivery for her neighbours, but when she got out of the car she found it was cemented in.
Hucker went and asked her neighbour about the strange discovery and, "he knew nothing about it and he thought I was building a carport".
After getting no answers she spoke with Tauranga City Council, but they told her they couldn’t find anything on their systems relating to the pole.
"They don't have to give any building consents to a certain size carport, so they had no leads to tell me."
She posted pictures of the pole on her local Facebook community page, where online sleuths were quick to offer up theories.
"There’s been suggestions, but not one that I think is actually plausible," she said.
One of them included that it might be a prank, but Hucker doesn’t think someone would spend this much on a joke.
"[The pole is] an elaborate and expensive way to do one of those things, I’d be quite complimented if someone put that much effort into doing that!"
Not even a senior prank from one of her Year 12 classes.
"Teenagers these days, I don’t know if they would go to much effort, like there have been pranks in the past and they usually do things in your classroom or whatever."
She said it has gotten attention at school from her students and staff. This includes jokes during staff meetings about the unusual situation.
"They [students] are just asking me for updates now which is pretty cute."
Her leading theory is that a worker mixed up her address with another and installed the pole by mistake.
Hucker doesn't plan on keeping the oddity around.
"It’s not staying, it’s got to go. It was just one and there is nothing on it. If nothing comes from this then I’m going to have to get it removed."
She did welcome the thought of whoever had put it there comes and finishes the job, whatever it may be, but wasn’t hopeful.
Council also in the dark
1News contacted Tauranga City Council to see if it could shed some light on the issue. Despite reviewing CCTV footage and checking building consents, it also came up empty-handed.
"Ms Hucker spoke with our contact centre earlier this week. Unfortunately, as the post is on private property, we don’t know why the post was installed there or who did it," Nelita Byrne, Acting General Manager of Community Services said.
"There are no current building consents issued against that property. We did wonder if there may have been some confusion with another property, given the intersection the property is near. So we checked consents for Vale Street, Ngatai Road and Chapel Street, and there are none that would have any relevance to this incident.
"We also checked for CCTV footage, but we don’t have anything that shows what happened."
Byrne added it was great to see the community getting behind Hucker to try and solve the mystery.
"We’re hoping, like many others, that the post installer will come forward to sort it out. If not, we’ll be calling Ms Hucker next week to see how our team can help with removal."
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