“Slow down you bastards”
Tom’s been walking again. Follow his latest tramping adventure from traversing the Hutt Valley to Kāpiti via the Akatarawa Road here.
Towards Tangi-te-Keo
Up the back of Newtown – past the hospital, past New Zealand’s first branch library, past the community display-window where the Conscientious Objectors’ memorials absent from Pukeahu Park quietly underscore ANZAC celebrations – runs a narrow path marking the spine of Tangi-te-Keo (later Mt Victoria). Māori knew the spine of Tangi-te-Keo as Te Ranga-a-Hiwi, the Ridge of […]
Notional Significance: Yellow Earth
[See all Notional Significance posts] Wind-hurried raindrops pelt against the Shadehouse roof, which provides but meagre shelter as I wait out the passing shower. Cold droplets descend through green air into the expectant foliage, maintaining a humid atmosphere to feed a pteridomaniac’s wet dream. In a fern-fevered nation this is an orgy of patriotic symbols, […]
Notional Significance: Lagoons
[Alf’s back after a long absence! You can catch up on his previous post in this series, or read all Notional Significance posts.] The path skirts the six-lane highway, compressed between traffic and hillside, passing beneath stolid, galvanised totems that awaken onrushing commuters to an imminent decision. Soon the curve of the carriageway straightens, but the scrubby […]
Snakes and Shadows: History as Poetry in Chris Tse’s Year of Snakes
Cross Tory Street heading toward Aro; banish the Carrilon’s long shadow behind the white-and-teal Bible Society on your left, Nurse Maude’s mosaic gaze upon your right shoulder. Point your nose toward Tara-Ngaki Street – “shining mountain-peak” – and feel Haining Street incline beneath your feet as Tory’s constant woosh recedes into urban din. The senses […]
Notional Significance: Two Tides
[See all Notional Significance posts] The stream is now fully canalised, a tame channel running arrow-straight towards the harbour, as subtle as an engineer’s ruler. It once meandered across the broadening valley, softly folding into the estuarine flats. On its left bank, the colonial forces built Elliot’s Stockade to oversee the new road, but the […]
Notional Significance: Asylum
[See all Notional Significance posts] After my detour, I head back to the motorway’s edge. My route takes me along Mexted Terrace—a name that is engraved across Tawa’s skin, and with its twin associations of car dealerships and rugby it encompasses two dimensions of the suburban mythos. On the corner of Tremewan Street, with the […]
Notional Significance: Flat
[See all Notional Significance posts] I set off along Taylor Terrace, and into the slow, steady heart of the suburbs. So far my path has traversed urban, edgelands and rural landscapes, with occasional tangential encounters across suburbia’s ragged edges. But here I am engulfed, flanked on both sides, striding out its loose domestic rhythms: hip, […]
Notional Significance: Crossroads
[See all Notional Significance posts] Another bend; another ending. I cross into Tawa, which was a separate borough until 1989, when in the words of a former Mayor it was “just tacked on” to Wellington. Topographically, and perhaps in sentiment, it still leans more towards Porirua than to Lambton Harbour. But as the old track […]
Notional Significance: Backbone
[See all Notional Significance posts] In memory, my feet are weary as I leave the Halfway. My present tense seems strained now, an affectation of immediacy undermined by the distance between walking and writing: years since I was here in the flesh; almost as long since my words last travelled this road. But I must […]