Second coffin fuels row over auctioneer’s site

Press, 22 October 1984, Page 5

Second coffin fuels row over auctioneer’s site

By

STAN DARLING

A Timaru dealer in anything from antiques to junk is likely to face increasing pressure from the City Council to clean his place up, partly because of his attitude toward complaints about a coffin used to advertise his business. Mr Derek Workman has become publicity shy since attention was called to his Redruth Dealers business in King Street last month. He said last evening that he had received all the publicity he wanted, and would not comment any more; It was no longer convenient to have the spotlight on himself. But the Deputy Mayor, Cr Wynne Raymond, said that Mr Workman had not heard the last from the City Council. A report was being awaited on whether the council could take action against his unsightly frontage under the by-laws. Cr Raymond said last evening that he would push for new legislation if the bylaws would not allow the council to do something. He said Mr Workman had placed a second coffin outside his business, which is n

entrance to Timaru. The first coffin has a mannequin’s legs sticking out of it. The second had a model of a girl waving “like the Queen does from her car window,” said Cr Raymond.

“I find that bad enough,” he said, but it was more objectionable that someone was able to create such an eyesore alongside that stretch of highway. “I am determined that the council will do something about it,” said Cr Raymond. “If he wants to accuse me of passing retrospective legislation, so be it.”

The remains of a 125-year-old railway locomotive shed which Mr Workman demolished earlier this year are piled along the property frontage. He leapt from the shed when it started to move, and broke an ankle,

Last month, he told “The Press” that he intended to rebuild the shed as soon as he could. It would be used to shelter 58 “vintage and semi-vintage” vehicles parked on the property. Cr Raymond said he did not believe that Mr Work-

about removing the unsightly demolition material. When the original fuss started, Mr Workman said he was “the last one to offend anybody.” The first coffin had been outside his property for three years, and no-one had said it was offensive. Instead, it had become a tourist attraction.

“There is no way I’ll be dictated to, that I’ll move it,” he said. At the time he said the furore was “the best publicity I could have got. I lap it up.” He had asked people stopping to take photographs of the coffin whether it was offensive, and they had said it was not.

“To the average person, it doesn’t offend,” , he said. One of the complaints had come from the funeral director, who had brought the subject up at the funeral of Mr Workman’s father. It was not a real coffin, said Mr Workman, only a stage prop. ( “The main guts of the argument is that heap of wood out there,” he said, referring to the locomotive shed. Mr Workman said he had been in business in Redruth for 17 years. Before that, he

had operated for many years from his home. He had been a demolition contractor as well as a second-hand dealer for more than 35 years. Included behind Mr Workman’s motley line-up of old houses and fences are more than 1500 doors, and lots of windows. He said that he had 48 old Army vehicles on the property. "The council are knocking it, but it is a tourist attraction whether they like it or not,” he said. Cr Raymond said that stretch of highway deserved landscaping and beautification similar to that done recently along the Hilton Highway, on the northern end of Timaru. Mr Workman said his last publicity had come when he shifted an old, weatherboard house on to a vacant Miro Street section — in the middle of a new housing area — next to his own house. “Timaru is a very conservative town,” he had said last month. “People jump on the bandwaggon and holler blue murder before they know what’s happening.”