Make the sheep out of concrete and steel weighing in at 800kg and you could stop pretty much anything.
Josephine Regan’s six concrete sheep have been completed and are now sitting in a heavy flock at the front of her home near the Orokonui Ecosanctuary.
They are ready to be used as bollards for a Dunedin City Council project to create a pedestrian-only zone on Jetty St.
Work on the Jetty St project began recently, closing the street between Cumberland and Vogel Sts to traffic, and leaving the section between Vogel and Crawford Sts open to service vehicles only.
The council will spend about $550,000 on the project, which will include bluestone paving recycled from old cattle yards, cycle racks under the bridge spelling out the word "jetty", and the stern plates from Te Whaka — a ship built in Glasgow 107 years ago — incorporated into a green-wall.
Ms Regan said when tenders went out for the bollards she thought "there’s no better bollard than a mob of sheep".
"I answered the tender that way; they obviously liked it."
She won the tender early last year, and finished the sheep recently.The idea of the sheep had been in the back of her mind for years.
"I thought ‘yes, this could be the opportunity’."
After experimenting with a variety of designs on small models, she came upon two designs she was happy with.
To make the sheep she developed three and four-piece fibreglass moulds in which to pour the concrete.
Ms Regan said her background was in commercial design. Originally from the United Kingdom, she moved to Dunedin in 2004.
She said the "stylised" sheep were designed to be climbed on and fitted with historic activity in the warehouse precinct, which included wool classing and stock and station agents who once had offices there.
The sheep also softened the "rigid architectural elements" of the Jetty St overbridge.
Work on the Jetty St project is expected to take four or five months.
