There's a drive to succeed, there's complete pig headedness and then there's just plain crazy.
All these may apply to Allan Hopping. He heard stories about geothermal water in Whitianga and spent over 20 years trying to find it to open a hot springs spa.
It's cost him 7 millions dollars and personal heartache.
Creator Allan Hopping said “it was all that initial excitement then we started to lose wells - my children grew up and left. Unfortunately my marriage broke down so it got hard.”
This is the story of Alan Hopping's obsession to open the lost spring spa in Whitianga.
It started in 1985 when this was Hopping's camping ground and stories were filtering through from the locals.
Hopping explained “we were inspired by the legends of Whitianga and the lost spring of the Tapatapatea.”
The Tapa is a stream just north of here and it's otherwise known as Mother Brown Creek. A legend has it that Mother Brown lived 100 years ago and had five children, she would bathe the children and wash in the stream.”
It had disappeared 90 years ago, the council couldn't find it but Hopping was determined.
After having no luck, he used two diviners in the end - combined their information and picked a spot one morning when the campers were asleep.
This was in 1987 and he dug his first test well to 1050 feet.
The dig confirmed the stories and in 1989 he hit the jackpot, just metres away from his first digging site.
At the time they thought the spa would be finished in 6 years. Instead, four years later, they lost the well through electrical damage.
Hopping said “It was a hard time...”
But during this time Hopping had been creating facilities. The old school house had been moved from a nearby paddock to be the reception area, earth works were well under way and planting had started.
The cost of drilling the holes alone was several thousand dollars but Hopping still didn’t give up despite struggling to find the water again.
The years slipped by, there was a decade between the third and fourth wells due to legal wrangling with the contractors.
Undaunted, Hopping kept building - his vision firmly in his mind when others struggled to see it.
Friends and family were more helpful delivering Hopping to the finish line when doubt seeped in and strength was flagging.
Finally in 2004 the fourth and final well was drilled and the dream was close to being a reality.
But all too real was the cost.
Hopping said “Initially in our first well we thought we'd spend 180 grand, since then close to million. Resource consents about the same.value of the land so probably talking around seven million. But it's been over 21 years.”
Over two decades, four wells and an old school house have now become the lost spring.
The spa includes a restaurant, massage therapy centre, three main pools and an elevated pool in the crater lake of an erupting volcano.
And the water temperature ranges from 36 to 44 degrees.
Hopping now looks around proudly at his dominion “look at all the people. I've got to tell you that gives me the buzz from heaven. Talking, relaxing, laughing, such a pleasure.
“This is a very interesting year for us. Probably opened in the most difficult year in the last 20, don't know how I managed that one.”
They say you can't keep a good man down so Allan Hopping must be a truly remarkable individual because he has no regrets.
“I'm so grateful to be open. 20 years is a long time - a lot can happen to people. You can fall over for a lot of reasons. But I got to be open - if nothing else happens I made it. Through the grace of God I made it.”
3 News