when you come back home
Sometimes there comes a time when you must leave this town, your town for a break - it could be a holiday; it could be your OE; it could be that career move; it could be to do a geographical and just get away.
What's that? Your favourite barista moved to Westport, and you had to follow? (Yeah, OK. There's always an excuse.) But sooner or later, you must come back. And when you do there is always a moment when you know you are home.
Here's one such:
Coming down the Ngauranga Gorge there's that long sweeping curve where the Hutt and Porirua motorways meet. Look up from the road and you'll see Wellington arrayed in full panoply before you. There are our small cluster of tall buildings standing proud, feet in the sea and backs to the hills. There are the hills themselves, steeply carpeted with houses in defiance of tectonics and plain good sense, looking on to and out to the sea. There is the bowl of the harbour, rimmed with bush and filled with reflected sky. There is the sky, mostly blue, sometimes grey, often set with clouds scudding.
There it is. Our town. Where you live. Where I live.
Where is this moment for you?
Is it, as the Front Lawn once had it, flying overhead?
over Wellington Harbour
Oriental Bay is standing there in the sunlight
Is it that first sip of Mojo or Fuel?
Is it Courtenay Place at the weekend?
Where? What? With whom? Comment, zoomin, or blog away!
The harbour at night is pretty spectacular. It was like that a bit last night as I came in along the motorway.
Coming in to the harbour on the ferry at night is also a nice homecoming.
Weird - for me it's as well exactly the motorway curve in the Gorge. Seeing the CBD from there on a sunny day with a blue sky is enough reason to be there!
Another one is the awesome coffee from Mojo's, particularly if you've been overseas for a while and had to drink that stuff others call "coffee"...:)
As an intermittent visitor, it would have to be hearing the whole of the Front Lawn's "Tomorrow Night" on the Air New Zealand flights...That, and driving down the Kapiti Coast in the pissing it down rain, getting excited about catching some show that night...trying not to get sucked into the flooded shoulders.
Oh, and being really drunk on a sunny afternoon, seeing those white puffy clouds rip by in the sky.
Funnily enough, it's also when I LEAVE on the ferry and see the CBD recede I realize how much I love Wellington.
The Lady Luck espresso caravan.
The motorway curve does give a fantastic sense of arrival, and on the rare occasions when I come in to town that way, it does give a wonderful sense of being home. It makes you wonder why the council is spending hundreds of grand on a "gateway sculpture" for Kaiwharrawharra when there's already a natural gateway. It would be better to put the money towards ensuring that Harbour Quays and adjacent developments are of a decent architectural quality rather than a bunch of low-rent boxes.
Coming out of the railway tunnels has the same effect, if you're coming back in to town on the Kapiti or J'ville lines. Though I have to say that I got a great sense of arrival a while back after a day in the Hutt, coming into Lambton Quay on the bus and feeling great to be among tall(ish) buildings again.
And after a long time overseas in a place that doesn't know such delights, I know I'm home when I have my first roti chenai.
Funny you should mention that Front Lawn song, it always pops into my head at just that point on the drive home...
I used that song to describe my trip home from overseas last year. It's funny, I don't feel the same when I return to Tauranga (my actual hometown).
Funnily enough I noticed that ("Tomorrow night") while I was searching for the precise lyrics. It's certainly a better song than that dreary "Wellington" song that the Muttonbirds did a few years later.
I guess that has to do w/ Alan Gregg writing "Wellington" and Don McG and Harry Sinclair writing "Tomorrow Night." I think it's strange because Don McGlashan and Harry Sinclair seem like such guys from Auckland ("on Takapuna Beach...." and all that). Having said that, they shot one of their films in the Cambridge Hotel.
As someone who lives overseas but travels back regularly, its a combination of several experiences:
-seeing the harbour on a calm day
-Having decent fish and chips
-Decent coffee
-Seeing the old victorian houses in Mt Vic
-Tuesday night cheap beers at indigo or valve
-Mighty mighty or southern cross bars (even though they're new, they have a unique Wellington feel to them)
-Moore Wilsons or even New World which kicks ass on most foreign supermarkets
-Roti chanai and pizza pomodoro
-I also love getting over to the Wairarapa, which I guess is not technically wellington...
"Mighty mighty or southern cross bars (even though they're new, they have a unique Wellington feel to them)"
Funnily enough, MM reminds me of some of the hipster bars I knew in East London a few years back: intentionally shabby, full of ironic kitsch and trying to look a bit like a squat or student bar. Then again, Spitalfields and Shoreditch reminded me a lot of Cuba St, and I kept bumping into Wellingtonians on Brick Lane, so I suppose it makes sense.
I like the new SC, though I think they're laying on the faux Kiwiana a bit thick.
One of the things that I missed most when I was in the UK was proper cafes, whether old-school Welly bohemian like Midnight and Deluxe or a bit more upmarket like Floriditas and Felix. The UK has plenty of pubs, formal restaurants and greasy spoon caffs, but the idea of a casual cafe where you can get a good coffee, full meal or glass of wine at any time of day was pretty alien to them. That's why all the coffee chains (Starbucks, Costa etc) and chain pubs (All Bar One) have rushed to fill in the gap, but it happened in NZ much more organically and with much more character and individuality.
You picked it - the first view of the harbour at the bottom of the gorge after a weekend away tramping. Magic.
For international returns I'm totally influenced by October 2006, back from a month in Europe, standing in Aro St being scalded by the bright bright sunlight. You could see the paint flakes dropping off the houses a km away! So, as soon as the clouds part for a second and there's some sunlight - that's when I now think that I'm home in NZ. A Pavlovian response I guess (but without the tinned peaches).
When back in Wellington from elsewhere in the country it's more the physical signs of the culture than the environmental. Waft of Fuel Coffee in the terminal, drivers that know they are subordinate to pedestrians, beeping in the Hataitai tunnel, driving across Cuba St and getting a snapshot of a power suit and heels elbow-to-elbow with a stripy-sock.
Oh yes, I know that sweeping curve of the motorway. It has that quaint little transit sign that says Wellington and then ta-dah - there is the city, that neatly put together city that looks as if it has slid off the hills and onto the flat land. It's a sight that sometimes, when I have been to Auckland and endured being there although the place gives me a giant headache, brings me to tears. For more how much I love my city, read this.
Whoah! Beautiful piece, Kimberley.
On our old site, we once got people to write about their love of the city: read Let me count the ways for more.
This stirred so many memories for me. I visited here, from the UK, back in 1996 and when my visa expired I had a real sense that, 'I would be back.' Sure enough, as fate had it, I returned in 1999 and flying into Wellington, circling the Sounds and seeing Mount Victoria I knew my heart was home.
Sad little town at the end of the world in which some people think they may have something to say ... lovely place to live no doubt, but really just a novelty when it comes to moving and shaking.
Coming into wellington along the water front, on a still night is the best feeling of being home. Even if you've been asleep for the whole trip you always wake up to see it! amazing!
Also Cuba street. And its people.