The Blongs, once on the brink of losing everything in the mid-1980s, found hope and renewal in the unforgettable grace of Torvill and Dean's (pictured) gold medal-winning "Bolero" at the 1984 Winter Olympics. Photo / S&G, PA Images via Getty Images
This weekend the Paradice Aotea Square opens for the winter, while the family behind it celebrate half a century in the business of skates and ice rinks.
But 40 years ago they nearly lost it all, only to be saved by events half a world away: Torvill and Dean winning the gold medal at the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics.
Ross Blong, now 88, recalls growing up working on his dad’s farm at Ruawai when, aged 22, his dad came back from the lawyers to say he now had his own farm to run next door.
“I was white around the gills (with fear),” Blong said.
Ross married Nell in 1964 and the couple were soon running both farms as the Blong seniors retired to Whangārei. Ten years, three kids and many cows later they were overwhelmed with the work and the need to invest money in both farms.
Ross searched for a cash business, answering a mysterious ad in the New Zealand Herald.
“I told Nell it was an ice skating rink,” Ross said. “I’d never even heard of an ice skating rink!”
Nell had been on a trip to the rink in Glen Innes.
“It seemed so glamorous and it clicked something in me,” she said.
“We liked the atmosphere and that people were all having fun,” Ross said.
“We thought two or three years then we’d come back home.”
With the deal done the family moved into an old caravan at the back of the rink. They soon found it was very popular, especially with teenagers.
“The rink became the centre of the kids’ universe,” Ross said.
It was also home to New Zealand’s first ice hockey team, Manu-Wai, started for troubled teens by Glen Innes local Ma Hita.
“She gave them tough love,” Ross said, adding that she instilled discipline and pride in the youngsters, raised money to take them to play in Australia and even persuaded clothing companies to donate a uniform.
Manu-Wai celebrated 50 years with a free skate and kai at Paradice Avondale in August 2023 with many former players personally thanking the Blongs for their help.
One young man told Ross that the rink had saved his life: he’d left a troubled home aged 16 and being part of a group at the rink gave him a chance.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Ross said. “It was very moving.”
People from all over Auckland came to skate at a time when there wasn’t much else to do. They often got more visitors than the zoo, Ross claims.
By the late 1970s Auckland outgrew the rink which was good only for entertainment not sports and the Blongs decided to build a full-sized rink at Avondale.
Halfway through construction roller skating became the new craze and turnover fell off a cliff. With interest rates over 20%, their accountant advised mothballing the project, but the Blongs persisted and Prime Minister Sir Robert Muldoon opened Paradice Avondale in May 1981.
The canny cow cockies from kumara country became adept at promotion running ice dance spectaculars on a mobile rink at the ever-popular Greenlane Showgrounds.
Despite such efforts, patronage tailed off and things were looking grim.
“At Christmas 1983 I worked through the figures and thought about selling the farm,” Ross recounts. “But it wouldn’t cover the costs.”
He reckons they had about three months.
On February 9, 1984, British figure-skaters Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean took the world by storm with their routine at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics.
Wearing fabulous costumes and performing daring, beautifully choreographed moves to Ravel’s Bolero they won gold with an unprecedented perfect score watched live by millions around the world, including in New Zealand.
They were all over the telly for weeks giving the Blongs just what they needed. In 1985, Torvill and Dean performed to sell-out crowds in a 7000-seater converted woolstore in Wiri on a mobile ice rink provided by the Blongs.
With ice skating back in the public imagination things took off again prompting the Blongs to open another full-sized rink in Botany, Auckland in the late 1990s.
Their children also made waves with Chris and Rosie competing in figure skating and Darren playing centre for the Ice Blacks, the national ice hockey team for 14 years, eight years as captain. Rosie carried the Olympic flame for NZ at the Torino Winter Olympics in 2006.
Prime Minister Dame Helen Clark watched Darren lead the Ice Blacks to victory in the Division III world championships at Avondale in 2003, telling Nell that they were the biggest baby-sitters in town. Clark had taken her nieces and nephews skating a number of times over the years.
Darren’s gold medal now hangs in the Ice Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto and his daughter, Katya, followed in her father’s tracks winning a gold at the Winter Youth Olympics in 2020 and was in the team that finished runner-up to Australia in the women’s world championships in Dunedin this year, losing by one goal in a shootout.
“Katya got a lot of their points,” a very proud Nell said.
Rosie’s daughter, Mirika Armstrong, is one of the country’s top figure skaters competing regularly.
Today, their son, Chris, manages the business and runs four mobile rinks, in addition to Avondale and Botany, with pop-ups in Dunedin, Wellington and Taupō as well as central Auckland.
Ross says that ice skating is all about people. “A lot of it is giving satisfaction - you can see it in their faces.”
Nell agrees, acknowledging all the kids, managers and volunteers over the years. “You couldn’t do it without them,” she said.
The Aotea Square pop-up ice rink is open until July 20.