Lyric Waiwiri-Smith reports from a public meeting held in Upper Hutt on the state of healthcare in a city where residents worry they could die before seeing a GP.

An eight-week wait time to see a GP, closed books, no local hospital, primary birthing unit or after-hours care facility and overcrowding at your nearest hospital – about 18km away – so bad there’s a 71.3% likelihood of  not being seen on time: welcome to the reality of trying to access public healthcare in Upper Hutt.

It’s a city whose bogan reputation precedes it, but its residents also include a growing number of young families and diverse communities, as well as an ageing population on the rise. Housing is set to increase with a controversial project on the fast track, and its theme-park beer precinct Brewtown even brought Six60 to town – but with a severe lack of infrastructure and resources to treat sick citizens, some residents worry Upper Hutt’s healthcare has never been worse, and will only exacerbate under the pressure of a growing city.

One of those is youth and community development worker Sionainn King, who told a crowd gathered at the Trentham Masonic Clinic this week to share their local healthcare concerns that she moved back to the city four years to care for her nana, who was living independently with dementia. She was concerned that during the second lockdown, the local pharmacy hadn’t noticed that her nana had failed to pick up her medication for at least eight weeks.

Securing any in-home care assistance has been difficult, said King. The family struggled to convince King’s nana, who needs assistance in daily activities such as showering and eating, to receive the Covid vaccine, and fought for two years to persuade her to see a doctor. “It makes me sad that our older whānau – and particularly a lot of older Pākehā who don’t live in village situations – fall through the cracks,” she said. “I know my nana isn’t the only one.”

“Who else is suffering when they don’t have advocates?”

Tuesday night’s meeting was called by urban planner and transport adviser Peri Zee, also a mayoral hopeful in the city’s upcoming local election, who said a lack of access to public healthcare was “one of the major things people tell me is missing in Upper Hutt”. “Our 50,000-strong population have nowhere to go when they are acutely unwell,” she told the audience.

The city’s former after-hours care facility within Upper Hutt Medical Centre was discontinued in 2022, after Silverstream Medical Centre pulled out of the pool of providers that helped run it – since then, locals have had to make the 20 to 30-minute drive to Lower Hutt Afterhours Medical Centre in Boulcott, where Hutt Hospital is also based. The hospital is the only one in the region, serving everyone from the most northern parts of Upper Hutt to those living on the edge of Petone beach, some 21.5km apart.

Zee said the now defunct facility had “saved” her epileptic son’s life when he had his first seizure. She said she had no choice but to drive to the after-hours as the other options were a 40-minute wait for an ambulance to arrive from Wellington, or a half-hour car journey to Hutt Hospital while her son’s face changed colour. “The staff [at Upper Hutt Medical Centre] are incredible, but they can only do so much in a broken system,” Zee said.

She said the lack of service was felt more intensely in the poorer northern suburbs such as Timberlea, where the distance between Upper Hutt and Boulcott is exacerbated by a lack of suitable public transport, and some areas don’t have a local pharmacy. She said she had been in conversations with Health NZ and requested a meeting with health minister Simeon Brown, but said the city now “desperately needs local leadership” to ensure change.

Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins – alongside panellists Ayesha Verrall, Labour’s spokesperson for health, the New Zealand Nurses Organisation’s Wellington organiser Jo Coffey and facilitator Josh Briggs – told the crowd he had always found healthcare in the city to be effective. This is because he has had the same GP since he was a child and his children are also enrolled with a private GP, he explained.

However, as the local MP since 2008, Hipkins said other residents had shared with him their concerns around the difficulty in enrolling in “overflowing” practices, and that services at Hutt Hospital and the Lower Hutt Afterhours were “hit or miss” with long wait times. He said more available urgent care across the Hutt Valley would ease pressures on the emergency departments (EDs), where patients who should instead be seen by a GP are adding to overcrowding.

Former health minister Verrall said she had seen myriad situations similar to Upper Hutt’s around the motu in the last 12 months. She pointed to hospitals in Dargaville and Buller, where a lack of staff had significantly impacted access to healthcare – local governments should be investing in health and then collaborating with central government for support, she said, but it wouldn’t address the lack of staff.

“It’s not the fact that if an after-hours opened in Upper Hutt, Health New Zealand would be able to pay for the patient volume,” Verrall said. “We will never be able to build enough white boxes to accommodate very sick people big enough for our country, we have to keep investing in primary care in the community to keep people well.”

Coffey said EDs around the Wellington region were turning into “mini wards”, with some patients waiting up to three days to be seen in an “overwhelming” environment. “There just isn’t the space for the amount of people that are coming through,” she said, a reality worsened by the fact that nurses aren’t being replaced when they leave their roles, as well as a lack of Māori and Pasifika nurses and Health NZ’s pause on safe staffing ratios.

Resident Paul Bryant, 76, told the crowd he recently enrolled with Upper Hutt Medical Centre because it was closer to home, but the centre’s eight-week wait time to see a GP had been an “incredible” discovery. As a pensioner, he said paying $70 to see his GP was “heartbreaking”, and his GP only infrequently reopened his calendar to take more bookings.

“That’s absolutely hopeless,” Bryant said. “You’ve got this tug of war going on: you can’t afford to go, but you need to go.”

The city once had programmes designed to encourage residents to keep fit, but a rate increase saw the initiative scrapped – a loss which Bryan said has resulted in fewer residents feeling healthy. He also suggested medical centres should be funded according to the number of patients they treated, rather than how many were enrolled.

“If Upper Hutt City Council works with the health centre, [then they can] actually support the health centre to actually provide a better service,” he said. “We need local community solutions”.

Tomorrow night, the unmistakable scent of petrol and mud will hang in the air at Western Springs Speedway for the last time.

The floodlights will beam, the engines will roar and fans will gather for one final night of high-speed spectacle. For 96 years, Western Springs has been the heart of New Zealand speedway racing, a place where generations have stood trackside, feeling the thunder of sprint cars reverberate through their bones. However, tomorrow (March 22, 2025), the checkered flag will wave for the last time.

The farewell is bittersweet – equal parts nostalgia for the good old days and a sober realisation that the engines are falling silent not by choice, but because of circumstance. As Auckland Council pushes forward with its plans to redevelop the stadium, Western Springs Speedway’s closure signals the end of an era, not just for motorsport fans, but for Auckland’s cultural and sporting landscape. The final meet will be a celebration, a tribute, and, for many, a heartbreaking goodbye.

Almost a century of history

Western Springs Stadium has been synonymous with speedway since 1929, when the first motorcycle races took place on its oval track. The natural amphitheater in central Auckland proved a perfect venue, and by 1937, the first car events (midget car races) were drawing crowds in their thousands. Over the following decades, the stadium became one of the world’s best speedway venues, hosting legends like Ivan Mauger, Barry Briggs and Ronnie Moore on two wheels, and American stars like A.J. Foyt and Sleepy Tripp on four.

In the post-war years, Western Springs wasn’t just a sports venue – it was Auckland’s Saturday night mecca. Massive crowds packed the terraces for a night of high-octane entertainment. Speedway became woven into the city’s fabric, drawing families back year after year. Even as the decades passed and motorsport evolved, Western Springs remained a place where history was made and legacies were built.

Generations have grown up beside this track. For many families, speedway racing has been passed down like a treasured heirloom. Grandparents brought their children and those children grew up to bring their own kids decades later.

“That’s the uniqueness of it,” says Speedway manager John McCallum, speaking exclusively to The Spinoff earlier this week at his office in Newton, which houses him and a part-time contractor, just up the road from the stadium. McCallum – who grew up at Western Springs Speedway and is the former chief executive of Speedway New Zealand – has been at the helm since 2020 and been heavily involved in operations for many years prior. “I could never imagine a time when you wouldn’t go to Western Springs. It’s where families have always gathered.”

That generational devotion is what makes the closure so sad. Not just for the countless families who grew up with the roar of engines in their ears, but for all fans of speedway racing in New Zealand and across the world.

As the 2024–25 season has wound down, every event at Western Springs carried an air of finality. Fans have packed the stands in high numbers, determined to soak in every last moment. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been enough to stop the inevitable closure.

“We knew this day was coming,” says McCallum. “But that doesn’t make it any easier.”

The March 22 finale will see the return of speedway legends, past champions, and thousands of devoted fans for one last night. Drivers from across New Zealand and overseas will take to the track, eager to leave their mark on a venue that has defined speedway for nearly a century. The races will be fast, loud, and emotional, with tributes planned to honor the past and those who made Western Springs what it was.

Why the roar is falling silent

Western Springs Speedway operates within a structure of ownership and management overseen by Auckland Council through its council-controlled organisation, Tātaki Auckland Unlimited. The stadium is managed as part of the city’s larger network of event venues and in recent years, council leadership has sought to find what they consider a more commercially viable use for the site.

As part of this process, a call for expressions of interest was issued, seeking proposals for the future use of Western Springs Stadium. Notably, no submissions were made to continue speedway at the venue, including from current promoter Bruce Robertson, reinforcing the council’s stance that the sport was no longer financially sustainable in its current form. The most prominent proposal came from Auckland FC, an A-League expansion team backed by billionaire Bill Foley and his Black Knights Sports & Entertainment group, alongside local investors Ali Williams and Anna Mowbray. Their vision for the stadium, revealed earlier this week, aligns with Auckland Council’s broader push for a revitalised sports and entertainment precinct.

Despite the decision to close the speedway, efforts to save it have not stopped. The Save Our Speedway group has been vocal in its opposition, continuing to rally support in an attempt to halt the closure. A planned march to Western Springs Stadium coinciding with tonight’s final event aims to bring fans together in protest, demonstrating the strong sentiment that still exists for keeping speedway at its historic home. Organisers hope the event will send a clear message to Auckland Council that the decision should be reconsidered. However, with redevelopment plans already in motion, the likelihood of success remains unlikely.

“Operating at Western Springs has become commercially unviable due to strict event restrictions, limited race nights, and the costly burden of dismantling and reinstalling infrastructure for other events – all challenges that don’t exist at typical stadiums,” says McCallum.

The Speedway manager insists they fought hard to keep the venue running, investing heavily in legal counsel and a barrister to explore any possible avenues for extension. However, their efforts hit a dead end when Auckland Council made it clear that Western Springs was no longer a viable long-term option. “We spent a lot of money with a barrister investigating any way we could,” says John McCallum. “They asked Vicki Salmon (chair of Tātaki Auckland Unlimited) directly if there was a future for Speedway at Western Springs – the answer was simply no.”

Western Springs Speedway’s closure is not just a tale of nostalgia – it’s also a reflection of changing times and economics. Over the last decade, the Speedway has struggled to make a profit. In its heyday, the stadium attracted up to 20,000 fans on race nights, with a devoted weekly following throughout the 1980s and 90s. However, attendance has steadily dropped in recent decades, impacted by competition from other live entertainment options, changing leisure habits, and the rise of streaming and at-home entertainment. The final season has seen a resurgence in crowds, but as McCallum notes: “We needed fans to pack the stands years ago – not just when they knew it was ending.”

Auckland Council has also long debated the best use for Western Springs, citing financial losses of over $1m last season and arguing that the venue is underutilised. The decision to move the speedway to Waikaraka Park in Onehunga, with an $11m upgrade planned, is its answer to preserving the sport in Auckland – albeit in a new home.

“We fought as hard as we could,” McCallum says. “But when your landlord doesn’t want you there, it’s a battle you just can’t win.”

With Western Springs set to be redeveloped, its future likely lies in football and concerts. The newly formed Auckland FC A-League team is widely expected to make the stadium its permanent home and concert promoters are eager to use the site without the constraints of speedway’s seasonal requirements.

For the speedway community, the shift to Waikaraka Park has been met with mixed emotions. The track is smaller, the location is different, and it lacks the history of Western Springs. Some fans fear that without its iconic home, speedway will struggle to maintain its already diminished audience. Others see it as an opportunity – a chance for the sport to build a more sustainable future away from the constant threat of closure.

McCallum, for one, is hopeful. “It’s not Western Springs – it never will be. But speedway will survive. It has to.”

For now, all that’s left for speedway fans is to give Western Springs Speedway the send-off it deserves. The crowd will sit in the stands one last time, breathing in the familiar stench, knowing they are witnessing history. Speedway at Western Springs may be ending, but the memories of roaring engines, sliding sprint cars, and generations of families gathered under the lights will live on. The engines will fall silent, the grandstands will empty, and the dust will settle. But for those who have loved this place, its spirit will never fade.