Talking Poles – Tokoroa

Tokoroa, Waikato, New Zealand

Public art

✓

Current

Checked by Project Big Things · Sep 2026

This Big Thing is recorded as still being here.

A town-wide collection of large carved poles representing Tokoroa’s cultures, industries and stories.

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Talking Poles – Tokoroa

This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.

Approximate location · 38.220° S, 175.870° E

FIELD GUIDE

The story

A landscape designer suggested some carved poles for the shopping area in 1996, and Tokoroa now has dozens of them.

Colleen Priest proposed the idea as a feature for the town's retail centre, and at a public meeting in 1997 there was strong support for a collection of sculptured poles representing Tokoroa's many different cultures, clubs and organisations. That framing is the reason the project worked: the poles were not commissioned to depict the town's industry but to let its constituent communities each say something.

Tokoroa is the right place for that. It grew as a mill town around the Kinleith pulp and paper works and drew workers from across New Zealand and the Pacific, producing a population considerably more diverse than most inland North Island towns – and a set of poles representing different cultures is a fairly direct response to who actually lives there.

The project's turning point was the inaugural Pole Art of the World Symposium in March 2004, which produced eight new sculptures in native and exotic timbers by local, national and international carvers and drew around five thousand people to the site over three weeks. That proved the appetite and revitalised the whole scheme.

For years it ran on a trust of volunteers. In 2015 the council recognised their efforts and, by agreement, brought the project in-house – which is the outcome every volunteer-run public art scheme hopes for and few achieve.

Many of the poles cluster near Leith Place, where the Pine Man also stands.

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PRACTICAL

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WHAT TO EXPECT

South Waikato District Council records dozens of Talking Poles around Tokoroa and confirms they remain a core civic-art feature, with many concentrated near Leith Place.

ACCESS

Treat the Talking Poles as a walking trail/collection rather than a single-point attraction. Begin in Tokoroa CBD and use the South Waikato District Council location map; the recommended arrival is a central pedestrian anchor, not a single pole or dedicated parking bay.

COMMUNITY

Visitor Log

WHAT'S NEXT

Find another Big Thing nearby

A large forestry-worker figure made from treated pine, metal, rubber and leather in central Tokoroa.

Public art

0.3 km away

✓ Recommended arrival recorded

TRANSPARENCY

Sources & research

South Waikato District Council – Talking Poles

South Waikato District Council · recorded 2026-08-23

Council documents the town-wide Talking Poles initiative and individual major works.

Government

South Waikato District Council CBD redevelopment

South Waikato District Council · recorded 2026-08-23

Council documents removal and reinstatement of poles into the Leith Place forest.

Government

Talking Poles – current council visitor information

South Waikato District Council · recorded 2026-08-22

Government

What we're still checking

Open-licence image search completed 24 August 2026. No defensible reusable image with file-level commercial-use provenance was verified in the completed Commons, government/open-licence and archival/open-collection sweep.

Current attraction geography remains locality-level because Sprint 8 did not find defensible mapped/GIS/geotagged site or object geometry.

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