From decorative wrought iron gates on an unassuming residential Avondale street, a lengthy gravel driveway stretches to a strip of vibrant white buildings in the shade of towering green trees. From the roadside, a bright red phone and letter box can be seen contrasting against the Victorian structures. It’s an intriguing view.
“My grandfather’s dream was to create a model village to replicate old Auckland,” says Clint Ryder as he welcomes me onto the two-acre site, Ryders. “He was always bringing stuff back and doing a little bit here, a little bit there. He was making a barber shop, a blacksmiths –building a world with a world. But the memorabilia side of things definitely took over! MOTAT actually started after my grandfather started collecting, and they came to meet him and used his model as a basis for their development.”
The main long white building houses the original bar from Kelvin House on Hobson Street and various sporting, music, and entertainment paraphernalia including a giant Elvis statue, signed photos of Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali, and still-boxed 80s toys, including from this writer’s favourite childhood TV show, The A-Team.
Clint cracks us open a couple of cold ones and we shoot the breeze before taking a stroll around the grounds. His grandfather, Jack, he tells me, planned to have the bar serve as a train station, with a 1902 tram running up the drive. A former coachbuilder and the oldest of four brothers, Jack loved vehicles of all kinds.
Adjacent to the bar, an old-school service station sits beneath a massive Ford sign replete with vintage Shell petrol pumps. Inside, a Ford Model T ‘service truck’ sits with a towing hoist affixed to its rear end while Striling Moss’s racing suit from his first Grand Prix win in 1955 is framed for his “old friend” Jack in a nearby garage.
“My great grandfather was an All Black in the 1900s, and he played for nearly every provincial team in New Zealand,” beams Clint. “He received mail from the king for representing his country, so that’s how this basically all started. My grandfather was a decent league player, but he had to give it up and then he got into collecting. That would have been around the 1950s.”
Since then, Jack accumulated further treasures like the wheelhouse from the HMNZS Kiwi, the legendary minesweeper that destroyed a massive Japanese submarine during the second world war; the bilge pump from the Edwin Fox; a cannon from the Bounty (possibly, research is being carried out, but it’s definitely from a frigate from that era, from that region); and19th-century ship menus, including from Titanic’s sister ship the Olympic.
Clint hands me a manila folder bulging with yellowed newspaper and magazine clippings which reach back all the way to the 60s, and from which I later learn that his grandfather’s eclectic cornucopia of collectibles led to the nickname “Junky Jack”. “I like getting them straight from the playing fields,” Jack told the Auckland Sun in 1987. “I’ve got football jerseys there still with the mud on them – I think that’s the way it should be.” His wife, Margaret, said that she abides her husband’s hobby because “he doesn’t drink and doesn’t smoke”.
The sports memorabilia, comprising the likes of signed cricket bats – including from Sir Donald Bradman and Sir Geoffrey Boycott – balls, caps, and jerseys, was described as one of the country’s “most extraordinary” collections. There are signed photos of Jack with Bradman, Ali, and George Best, and he even got hold of the singlet Peter Snell wore when he won gold at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
Ryders feels part-museum, part-film set, so it’s only fitting that there’s also a 60-seater movie theatre replete with a 35mm projector housed in a raised projector room at the back and adorned with original classic movie posters. “We were all in here watching the world cup last year!” says Clint. “I’m painting the theatre and putting up all the old enamel and tin signs of the advertisers that used to be in the picture houses.”
More original signs are plastered to the exterior of a fascinating nearby two-storey tavern – most advertise the likes of whisky and Guinness, while another reads: one penny for the New Zealand Herald – along with vintage vending machines for stamps, Nestle chocolate, and Kodak film. Clint plans to restore this building as a bar and permanent museum. Ryders was hard hit by the lockdowns, further compounded by the flooding last year which saw it closed for much of 2023. The site is up and running again, though not open to the public, instead hosting private functions for the likes of car clubs and senior groups with Clint in charge of cooking roast meals on the wood-fired ranges in the cinema building.
“My grandfather’s dream was to create a model village to replicate old Auckland,” says Clint.
Clint recalls “tagging along” with his grandfather on those expeditions, watching as he negotiated in hotel rooms, kitchens, bars, and living rooms with celebrities and sportspeople. As Clint got older, he would drive the pickup truck. From listening to Clint reminisce (and later from reading the clippings) it’s clear, I say as we bid farewell, that Jack was a real aimable bloke, and a real one-off.
“Oh, he was,” says Clint, who then pauses. “But he was a tough negotiator too, it was either his way, or nothing, you know. He’d rather swap than take money, money just didn’t interest him.
“He was a man years ahead of his time. He not only had a great eye for these artefacts, but understood their importance and how future generations would value them.”
WORDS —
JAMIE CHRISTIAN DESPLACES
