The Shed magazine August/September 2026 issue 128 on sale now
Sentimental Journey
Jack Ryder had a unique ability to hypnotise sports stars, politicians, and celebrities into donating items for his museum and sports memorabilia collection. Now, his grandson Clint manages this West Auckland landmark, but the property development vultures are circling.
It is hard to imagine a less likely location for a living museum than the back blocks of suburban West Auckland in Avondale.
Yet here, towards the end of a lengthy no-through road, the Ryder family hold tight to a self-built vestige of Auckland’s yesteryear. While the surrounding streets are turned into homogeneous multi-unit town housing, the Ryders’ two-acre slice of Pavlova Paradise remains, less a multi-generational home ground and more a celebration of the character of the city’s past.
Slipping through the tall white gates past the twin concrete lion sentinels at the street end of Ryder’s long hedge-lined driveway, the modern world slips away. Ahead, in the shade of a 100-year-old Pecan tree, an enclave of antique edifices opens out along the back-fence line like a set from a period movie. This corner of vintage Kiwiana is the handiwork of the late and industrious Jack Ryder, a coach-builder and wharfie, who began constructing it from a group of sheds spread across the property.
New Zealand Railways celebrates 150 years
In 2013, Railways in New Zealand marked the anniversary in October this year of 150 years since the first broad-gauge public steam railway opened between Ferrymead and Christchurch City in 1863, a distance of seven kilometres. The original gauge was five feet three inches (1600 mm) wide, although the standard gauge for New Zealand railways was to become three feet six inches (1067 mm).
As the Railways 150 Years Committee describes it, “People and goods were barged from the Port of Lyttelton to Ferrymead, then taken by rail to Christchurch. The Ferrymead Line operated for ten years from 1863 until 1873 when the 2.6-kilometre tunnel connecting Lyttelton and the Heathcote Valley was completed and commissioned.”
The celebrations for the anniversary in 2013 are focused on operations and displays at the Ferrymead Heritage Park during Labour Weekend and include heritage steam trips with the restored locomotive Ja1240 from Christchurch to Arthur’s Pass, Timaru and Ashburton. The Railways 150 Committee includes representatives from rail organisations such as the Ferrymead Railway, the National Railway Museum of New Zealand, the Mainline Steam Heritage Trust, the Plains Railway, the Weka Pass Railway, the Steam Canterbury Preservation Society and others. Additional help and assistance is provided by KiwiRail.
How to pimp your shed
The urge to decorate is universal, whether it be tattoos, floral designs on early Stanley rebate planes, or flames on hot-rod hoods, and sheds are no exception.
Big or small, simple or ultra-flash, sheds have one consistent feature – they all have decorations. These can be nostalgic, humorous, or more or less misogynistic (and often all three).
The mamo-centric female portraits which, in the past, were so common in garages and workshops are now rarely seen, perhaps because businesses which used to distribute complimentary “girlie” calendars can’t now risk the potential bad publicity. Or shed owners are embarrassed at the thought of their wives, children, or grandchildren seeing them. Or perhaps we have all become a little more mature.
Feminist relatives tell me that the purpose of pin-ups wasn’t decorative, but to make women visitors so uncomfortable that they wouldn’t linger, creating a woman-free zone. Sort of like farmers draping the skins of killed predators on fences to discourage their kin.
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