PHOTO: SUPPLIED TV personality Relda Familton and Graham Rowan in a 1910 trap before the bridge closure in 1969.

MEMORY LANE: It looms up in the distance, off to your right, as you cut through Ōpiki from State Highway 56, in the direction of Shannon and Levin.

Two strange towers, linked by a metal necklace, and nearby, an immensely tall chimney, standing in the countryside like some kind of abandoned movie set. What is it?

Thereby hangs a tale, not just of a structure, but of a family. It begins in the 1880s, with a man named William Akers.

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