Smash Palace is a New Zealand feature film, released in 1981. The film chronicles a former race car driver (played by Bruno Lawrence) who inadvertently helps ruin his own marriage, then kidnaps his daughter (Greer Robson). Lawrence's character runs a car wrecking yard in an isolated area of New Zealand's North Island.
The film centers around the "Smash Palace" car wrecking yard known on the North Island Volcanic Plateau, where former racing driver Al Shaw (Lawrence) lives with his unhappy French wife Jacqui (Jemison) and daughter Georgie (Robson). Jacqui begins a relationship with Al's best friend, local police officer Ray Foley (Aberdein). After a violent argument she leaves Al, taking Georgie with her. Al kidnaps Georgie and takes her into hiding, but shortly afterwards Georgie falls ill and the police catch up with Al when he tries to rob a pharmacy at gunpoint. Al ends up cornered in Smash Palace, and agrees to hand Georgie over in return for Ray.
Much of the film was shot on location at car dismantling business Horopito Motors, which has existed on the same site since the 1940s, in the former town of Horopito near Ohakune. A scene from road movie Goodbye Pork Pie was also shot in the same location.
As work gangs laying the North Island Main Trunk rail line from Auckland and Wellington moved inexorably closer together temporary work camps moved with them. Horopito was one such camp but by 1908 with the completion of the line it became obvious that Horopito was to be more than a work camp as a saw milling industry had started to establish in the district. Horopito township was surveyed about this time, the original map showing many streets and residential sections, and areas set aside for cemetery, hospital, police and educational purposes. In fact, studying promotional literature of the time, Horopito was expected to develop into a "Great Central Town located in the natural centre of the Great Waimarino Forest, which embraces tens of thousands of acres of the finest milling bush in the Colony"
However, in spite of this Horopito never really thrived. It depended on sawmilling and railway traffic for its existence and by the late 1950's, with the native forest cleared, the decline had set in and most of the small population had moved on. The school closed in 1966 and the Post Office in 1971.
Sometime during the mid 1940's Bill Cole arrived in town and established a motor garage and repair shop in what was originally a sawmill with cookhouse/bunkroom. He milled existing trees off the property with his own sawmill, which still stands and has been recently restored, built the family home and later the large sheds to house the ever burgeoning collection of cars.
Bill's philosophy was that if a car for dismantling came into the yard and whatever parts were not sold they would stay there. Nothing was scrapped, which explains the vast collection of parts that are here today.
The cache is a small camo hidden outside the car yards in Horopito. At times the snow may cover the cache's hiding place.