Trace, our Burnable Arts Liaison, recently interviewed the fantastic 2025 Temple builders, Paul and Kirsty – check it out!
Sooo let me get this straight – you’ve been our friendly medics for 17 Burns and this year you also built the Temple?
We have, and we did. We thought “what else can we do to make this crazy event even crazier? more fatiguing? and all consuming? I know, let’s build a Temple!” Well, more to the point, we had an idea that wouldn’t go away and after watching so many amazing creations being built over the years, we thought, why not?
For those Burners that were not able to attend, can you describe your build?
Te Ora O Te Whetu is the inscription on every qualified Ambulance Officers badge in Aotearoa New Zealand – it roughly translates to ‘The Star of Life’ which is the emblem used internationally for emergency medical services. The NZ version has the addition of four stars to represent the Southern Cross. We built a 2.4m high x 11m diameter Star of Life, with the rod of asclepius and the southern cross cut into the roof. We then named the ‘arms’ of the star to represent lifes journey (life, love, lust, fear, loss, death), and gave each arm a representative ECG rhythm.
Wow! What was your inspiration?
We’ve sat in the corner of the Paddock for 17 Burns, we are the link to the default world, we provide first aid and emergency support to the event and to those that need us. The vast majority of Burners never see us nor use our service, just like the 111 providers out in the default world (Ambulance, Fire, and Police) – they are there but unless you are having a bad day, they are not needed. Te Ora O Te Whetu represented the Burners going about their Burn, with those emergency services quietly waiting in the background (in the case of the build, the ceiling and the colours at night represented the emergency services).
How did you find the build process?
Fatiguing, rewarding, easy, hard, hot, and did I mention rewarding? We had a clear idea, we had a clear design, we had a clear plan, we had clear build objectives, and we had a clear (self-imposed) deadline. Initially we had some challenges sourcing appropriate build materials (untreated timber), and we had a bit of a downer when we realised you can’t buy untreated trellis anywhere in NZ so we had to make our own (24 x 2.4m sheets…) but once we found suppliers, invested in a decent table saw, and we created a jig for the trellis, we were off and racing! Kiwiburn Inc. were easy to work with, they had accounts with all of the mainstream tool/timber providers, and we just charged straight back to Kiwiburn. We built a flat pack of our design off site and, with early access to the site, we had the vast majority of our design erected in place in time for the community BBQ the Saturday before opening. Huge thanks to KB ExCom for all their help with the prebuild process, huge thanks to MPW and other on site services for all their support, and a huge thanks to the Effigy team for their suggestions re making our design ‘Burner friendly’.
How did you find the Burn?
Well…we almost missed it as we had to deal with a medical emergency immediately prior to the Burn (hence the long delay in burning the sucker) yet on reflection, it was all kind of poetic – delayed due to an emergency, ‘life’ was the first wing to fall, ‘death’ was the last, and for those keen of eye, they would have noticed that the last Ambulance left site just as ‘death’ fell.
What did you think of the Burner whānau reaction to your build?
All we can go by is the messages left on the walls of the Temple prior to burning… for cynical old ambulance officers, it was an emotional read. We built this as a whānau, we burnt it as a whānau.
We are currently calling for Effigy and Temple proposals. What advice would you give to budding builders?
DO IT! If you have a crazy idea and want to see it come to fruition, DO IT! Kiwiburn Inc. are very supportive, there’s a team there to help you, they try as hard as they can to make the process easy (just remember they are all volunteers as well), and it’s a rewarding, weirdly satisfying, frustrating, fun, exciting, fatiguing, journey, that you’ll regret not taking.
Please email burnablearts@kiwiburn.com with your Temple and Effigy ideas for 2026. We have a committed capable arts whanau waiting to assist bring your hot ideas to the Paddock.
Image credit: Paul and Kirsty
