Woman finds 2m high metal pole in driveway

Sophie Hucker drove back home last week to see the new two metre high protrusion in front of her garage.

“I thought, oh someone got it delivered here by mistake,” said the teacher, who lives in the New Zealand town of Tauranga, 200km south east of Auckland.

“But when I hopped out of my car to move it out of the way, it had been cemented in. I couldn’t move it.”

Ms Hucker’s first thought was that pole was the initial stage of a car port that had been placed on her property in error.

However, none of her neighbours said they were getting a car port built and all were baffled by the metal pole.

“They were as surprised as me. They thought I was building something. Or maybe it was a basketball pole. I don’t know what else you would do with it.” Ms Hucker told Kiwi news website Stuff.

Assuming no one would leave a single pole in the middle of a driveway, Ms Hucker left a note on the structure asking for whoever erected to call her – and to ask them, to under no circumstances, cement in any more poles.

The perplexing pole became a talking point – initially in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty region and then far beyond – as sleuths tried to work out what had happened.

Ms Hucker’s students became involved too, while she went to the local council for help.

“They said it wasn’t anything to do with them. Everyone is very confused.”

But after a week of collective bafflement, Ms Hucker has stated that the construction conundrum has been solved. And, more importantly, the pole had gone.

“It turned out to be a case of mistaken identity/address,” Ms Hucker said on social media.

She added that it was “quite the muck up” by a fencing installation company who only realised the error they had made after the pole received widespread coverage.

“Bit funny: they were laughing about it after seeing it on the news before they realised it was their bad.”

Ms Hucker said the firm came back, removed the pole, patched up the hole and were so “aPOLEgetic” they gave her a bottle of champagne to say sorry.

She decided not to name the company involved stating it was simple mistake and she didn’t want to tarnish their reputation.

Talking to The Bay of Plenty Times, Ms Hucker said she was far from furious.

“I don’t feel any ill-feeling towards the worker or company responsible for this muddle.”

Indeed, the whole driveway debacle had given many people a chuckle, she added.

The new patch of asphalt, strikingly fresher than the rest of the driveway, would be “a reminder of my 15 minutes”.

“What a ride that was.”

Originally published as Mystery solved of metal pole randomly cemented into middle of New Zealand woman’s driveway