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Editorial: Bonkers over bunkers

The Wānaka App

Marjorie Cook

06 May 2020, 6:10 PM

Editorial: Bonkers over bunkersDamper Bay PHOTO: realestate.co.nz

Don’t believe everything you read during COVID-19 lockdown.


Even I could be wrong.



Reportedly, rich Americans are fleeing to their New Zealand bunkers to avoid COVID-19, and according to the Daily Mail, there is one such subterranean refuge here in Wanaka.


Meanwhile, less financially fortunate residents of Wanaka must endure lockdown in their above-ground houses, watching through windows as their beloved town goes into full economic meltdown, blazing emergency red, orange and yellow all the way to the edge of the cold, blue lake.


This is where I make a leap of faith and where you might want to correct me.


I don’t believe United States tech firm Palantir’s billionaire co-owner Peter Thiel has built a bunker on his Lake Wanaka property so he can sit out whatever evil might cause him to want to flee to Wanaka.


But if you can prove Peter Thiel has a bunker at Damper Bay, as reported by other publishing platforms, I will happily stand corrected.


When COVID-19 broke, several media outfits began picking the scabs off on the New Zealand-as-doomsday-haven story that began doing the rounds at least three years ago.



The story is based on variously reported comments by Rising S Co general manager Gary Lynch, of Texas, about his company shipping doomsday bunkers to New Zealand for rich US clients.


Even before COVID-19, Wanaka and Queenstown were reportedly among the best places to bunker down and wait out emergencies precipitated by a world-wide financial collapse or some other disaster.


I thought our million-dollar views attracted house buyers. Perhaps real estate agents have been kidding. Maybe rich people prefer to exercise their right brain by examining fine, grainy layers of glacial soil heaped against glass. Maybe there’s something in this for soil scientists.


Peter Thiel PHOTO: Forbes


Peter Thiel could very well have a bunker or some sort of protected internal space at the Queenstown house he purchased several years ago. I don’t really care.


But I struggle to accept there is a bunker at Damper Bay.


First, it’s a farm. There is no house.


Second, this IS Damper Bay, and it is in plain view. And surely someone, any cyclist or walker, would have noticed and reported a digger.


Wanaka landscape architect Anne Steven was a key landscape witness in 2010, when a previous landowner unsuccessfully attempted to get resource consent for six houses at Damper Bay.


There were 110 opposers. The owners, a company associated with Auckland rich-listers Craig Heatley and Trevor Farmer, could not satisfy the tough district plan rules for developing a rural area of outstanding natural beauty.


When Thiel bought Damper Bay from Heatley’s and Farmer’s company in 2015, he acquired the right to build one house. 


A search of the Queenstown Lakes District Council’s property database this week reveals no application to build that house, nor any other sort of application for residential development, including an underground one. There is some stuff about fixing the public Millennium Track that runs past the farm. 


Anne Steven has greeted the bunker story with humour and scepticism.


“I guess burying a dwelling would resolve some landscape issues such as building visibility and colour! The core issues of effect of human presence and domestic activity on openness and natural character would remain, plus potentially new access as a scar and all the earthworks involved,’’ Anne said.


“I did read today that a prominent businessman is pushing the idea of encouraging wealthy foreigners to come here, buy land and build houses to get the economy going - not impressed.


“[That’s a] very poor basis for recovery. [There are] lots of better ways to get people employed and building economic resilience, such as local food production, planting out streams and wetlands, eradicating pests, that we would all benefit from, for decades to come.


“The wealthy are welcome to give philanthropic support and or invest in such ventures, in my view, but not buy up land to hide away in and not be a part of the community. Been there, done that . . . remember Damper Bay!’’


Not only is there no application for a bunker at Peter Thiel’s place at Damper Bay, the Queenstown Lakes District Council has no record of any bunkers in the entire district.


Communications spokesman Jack Barlow said neither the district plan nor the New Zealand Building Code define a “bunker’’.


People could build an underground garage or basement. But these need appropriate resource consents and approval for things such as the volume and depth of earthworks, retaining structures and neighbouring boundaries, he said.


How a person might choose to use their underground garage or basement is not a council matter “... unless used for commercial purposes or self-contained, whereby the activity would require additional assessment for commercial use or a residential flat,” Jack said.


After a four week flurry of interest in the flight of the rich to New Zealand, I think the real Peter Thiel story emerged on Radio New Zealand on Tuesday (May 5).


His company Palantir has been in talks with the Privacy Commissioner about providing COVID-19 tracking software to New Zealand Government departments. 


Civil liberties groups are worried about the company’s links to spy and defence agencies, including in New Zealand, Radio NZ reports.