Avalon is a suburb of
Lower Hutt
Lower Hutt ( mi, Te Awa Kairangi ki Tai) is a city in the Wellington Region of New Zealand. Administered by the Hutt City Council, it is one of the four cities that constitute the Wellington metropolitan area.
It is New Zealand's sixth most p ...
in New Zealand, formed as a private residential development in the 1970s on land formerly occupied by
market
Market is a term used to describe concepts such as:
*Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand
*Market economy
*Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market
Geography
*Märket, an ...
-
garden
A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate both ...
s on the left (eastern)
bank
A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets.
Because ...
of the
Hutt River. It features mostly
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
-inspired designed houses, often split-level, with 3 or 4
bedroom
A bedroom or bedchamber is a room situated within a residential or accommodation unit characterised by its usage for sleeping and sexual activity. A typical western bedroom contains as bedroom furniture one or two beds (ranging from a crib for ...
s. It also features one of the biggest park/playground in
Lower Hutt
Lower Hutt ( mi, Te Awa Kairangi ki Tai) is a city in the Wellington Region of New Zealand. Administered by the Hutt City Council, it is one of the four cities that constitute the Wellington metropolitan area.
It is New Zealand's sixth most p ...
The Hutt City Council formally defines Avalon as the area bounded by Percy Cameron Street and the Wingate Overbridge in the north, the
Hutt Valley rail line in the east, Fairway Drive and Daysh Street in the south, and the Hutt River in the west.
Avalon Studios
Avalon came to the attention of most New Zealanders as the early centre of the country's nationwide
television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...
-broadcasting production, particularly with the opening of the purpose-built Avalon Studios in 1975. Given that New Zealand started regular public television-broadcasting for the first time in 1960, and instituted
networked television in 1969 with only a single (and state-owned)
channel
Channel, channels, channeling, etc., may refer to:
Geography
* Channel (geography), in physical geography, a landform consisting of the outline (banks) of the path of a narrow body of water.
Australia
* Channel Country, region of outback Austral ...
available to viewers, the sole provider of television-broadcasting acquired a monopoly position of immense influence within the
New Zealand mass media, and the name "Avalon" summarised and expressed that clout for many years.
Avalon also became the focus of New Zealand
film
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...
-production - through and building on the
National Film Unit
The National Film Unit (NFU) was a state-owned film-production organisation originally based in Miramar, New Zealand. Founded in 1936 when the government took over a private film studio, Filmcraft, the NFU produced newsreels, documentaries and p ...
, which
Peter Jackson
Sir Peter Robert Jackson (born 31 October 1961) is a New Zealand film director, screenwriter and producer. He is best known as the director, writer and producer of the ''Lord of the Rings'' trilogy (2001–2003) and the ''Hobbit'' trilogy ( ...
bought in the late 1990s and incorporated into his
Park Road Post
Park Road Post Production is an international film and television post-production facility located in Miramar, a suburb of Wellington, New Zealand. Built out of the state-owned National Film Unit (NFU), the new facility opened upon completion i ...
facility. Avalon was the filming location for the 2002 television show ''
100 Hours
"100 Hours", a joint production between TVNZ and the Netherlands' IDTV, was a New Zealand television show filmed in Avalon, New Zealand that aired on TV2 on Sunday evenings in 2002. The show was hosted by Evie Ashton. There were around two thous ...
''.
Television New Zealand
, type = Crown entity
, industry = Broadcast television
, num_locations = New Zealand
, location = Auckland, New Zealand
, area_served = Nationally (New Zealand) and some Pacific Island nations such as the Cook Islands, Fiji, and the Solom ...
(founded in 1980) inherited the Avalon real-estate and continued to operate some functions from Avalon, even though its activities mostly moved to
Auckland
Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The List of New Zealand urban areas by population, most populous urban area in the country and the List of cities in Oceania by po ...
in the course of the 1980s. Avalon produced
television-shows such as ''
Good Morning
"Good morning" is a common greeting in the English language. It may also refer to:
Television
* ''Good Morning!!!'' (Australian show), a children's show
* ''Good Morning'' (New Zealand show), a daytime talk show
* ''Good Morning'' (Russian ...
'' and the New Zealand Lotteries Commission's live
Lotto Lotto may refer to:
* Lotto, original, 15th century name of the Italian lottery
* Lotto (Milan Metro), a railway station in Milan, Italy
* Lotto carpet, a carpet having a lacy arabesque pattern
* Lotto Sport Italia, an Italian sports apparel manu ...
draw.
Avalon Studio comprises two main buildings; a 10-storey tower and a single-story warehouse-style building. The tower is a 10-storey concrete building. The main tower was built in 1975, it was designed in a
Soviet-era architecture style. It has 10-storeys with 23,000m2 of floor space, there are also a number of satellites on top. When the tower was first built it dominated the skyline in
Lower Hutt City
Lower Hutt ( mi, Te Awa Kairangi ki Tai) is a city in the Wellington Region of New Zealand. Administered by the Hutt City Council, it is one of the four cities that constitute the Wellington metropolitan area.
It is New Zealand's sixth most p ...
, it is still the tallest building in Avalon.
At the end of 2010 there were rumours the show ''Good Morning'' would shift to Auckland,
and it was known the contract by the Totalisator Agency Board (TAB) shows Trackside (horse racing) and the Lotto draws was to end in mid-2013.
In 2011 TVNZ announced that it would sell off the site for good by 2013 and shift its remaining shows to Auckland, thus consolidating the broadcaster's Auckland focus.
In April 2012 a consortium, Avalon Holdings, bought the Avalon Studios with the expectation of officially taking possession in early 2013. In 2017 the studio facilities were used for filming of the Scarlett Johansson starrer
Ghost in the Shell (2017 film)
''Ghost in the Shell'' is a 2017 Action film#Science fiction action, science fiction action film directed by Rupert Sanders and written by Jamie Moss, William Wheeler and Ehren Kruger, based on the Japanese people#Arts, Japanese manga Ghost in t ...
. In March 2019 an application was lodged to transform the 10-storey Avalon Tower into 61 residential units.
Demographics
Avalon, comprising the statistical areas of Avalon West and Avalon East, covers .
It had an estimated population of as of with a population density of people per km
2.
![The Smiling Windmills](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/The_Smiling_Windmills.jpg)
Avalon had a population of 5,094 at the
2018 New Zealand census
Eighteen or 18 may refer to:
* 18 (number), the natural number following 17 and preceding 19
* one of the years 18 BC, AD 18, 1918, 2018
Film, television and entertainment
* ''18'' (film), a 1993 Taiwanese experimental film based on the sho ...
, an increase of 291 people (6.1%) since the
2013 census, and an increase of 432 people (9.3%) since the
2006 census
6 (six) is the natural number following 5 and preceding 7. It is a composite number and the smallest perfect number.
In mathematics
Six is the smallest positive integer which is neither a square number nor a prime number; it is the second small ...
. There were 1,974 households. There were 2,418 males and 2,676 females, giving a sex ratio of 0.9 males per female, with 900 people (17.7%) aged under 15 years, 897 (17.6%) aged 15 to 29, 2,127 (41.8%) aged 30 to 64, and 1,167 (22.9%) aged 65 or older.
Ethnicities were 57.8% European/Pākehā, 14.3% Māori, 12.9% Pacific peoples, 24.4% Asian, and 4.2% other ethnicities (totals add to more than 100% since people could identify with multiple ethnicities).
The proportion of people born overseas was 31.9%, compared with 27.1% nationally.
Although some people objected to giving their religion, 37.5% had no religion, 42.5% were Christian, 7.5% were Hindu, 2.7% were Muslim, 1.8% were Buddhist and 3.1% had other religions.
Of those at least 15 years old, 885 (21.1%) people had a bachelor or higher degree, and 843 (20.1%) people had no formal qualifications. The employment status of those at least 15 was that 1,842 (43.9%) people were employed full-time, 528 (12.6%) were part-time, and 237 (5.7%) were unemployed.
Education
Avalon has five schools.
*Avalon Intermediate School is a state intermediate (Year 7–8) school, and has students as of
*Avalon School is a state contributing primary (Year 1–6) school, and has students as of
*Kimi Ora School is a state special school for students with physical disabilities, and has students as of
*
Naenae College
Naenae College, is a state-run coeducational secondary school located in north-central Lower Hutt, New Zealand. It is situated on a site in the suburb of Avalon. The school was founded in 1953 to serve the Naenae state housing development, alt ...
is a state secondary (Year 9–13) school, and has students as of The school opened in 1953.
*Naenae Intermediate School is a state intermediate (Year 7–8) school, and has students as of
References
External links
Avalon Studios
{{Lower Hutt
Suburbs of Lower Hutt
Populated places on Te Awa Kairangi / Hutt River