Nation­al sig­ni­fic­ance begins with a round­about: from the air it looks like a navel, the axis of the world, the green Omphal­os where one begins. But what is begin­ning here? There’s a dis­tinct impres­sion that more traffic comes from the east­ern sub­urbs via Broad­way than from the air­port itself, which would make this a some­what arbit­rary choice for the start of the high­way. Surely the nation­al sig­ni­fic­ance of the high­way rests on air­port traffic (the “four lanes to the air­port” man­tra), rather than priv­ileging a par­tic­u­lar set of com­muters? 

Regard­less, I dash across the traffic to invest­ig­ate the curi­ous fig­ure inhab­it­ing the centre of the round­about. She’s a sculp­ture by Paul Dibble, who appears to be mak­ing a career of round­about memori­als (togeth­er with the New Zea­l­and War Memori­al marooned on the traffic island of Hyde Park Corner), and while the inscrip­tion on her cheek reads “Paci­fica 2000”, her offi­cial title is “Lady Down Under”. That, pre­sum­ably, is why her one vis­ible arm (and one of her three feet) points down­ward, plunging an index fin­ger into the earth. Per­haps some­where beside the Autovia de Castila there’s a bronze fin­ger­tip pok­ing up from the earth at a bemused Span­iard. It’s odd that an air­port com­pany so keen on being “world class” should draw atten­tion to our anti­podean status: Europeans are on top, the true inhab­it­ants of the right-way-up globe; and we’re down under, the rumoured, impossible anti­ch­thones.

Back on the road. Enorm­ous bill­boards hec­tor drivers about “choice”, their flimsy mes­sages sup­por­ted on hefty legs: engin­eered for a hur­ricane and firmly bolted to their con­crete found­a­tions, they look like they could sup­port an oil rig. But fur­ther down the run­way, anoth­er, more mod­est sign has more to say — or at least, says more through what it avoids. A small bill­board sim­pers “Wel­come to Wel­ling­ton” beneath an uplift­ing pho­to­graph­ic mont­age, and in smal­ler print below admits “Cap­it­al of Nuc­le­ar Free New Zea­l­and”. This replaced the bolsh­ie ori­gin­al “Wel­come to Wellington/A Nuc­le­ar-Free City”, erec­ted in the act­iv­ist ‘80s, when it was decided that it no longer fit with “the council’s new stra­tegic vis­ion for the city”. Even the cur­rent word­ing, weaselly and dehy­phen­ated as it is, was a reluct­ant sop to out­raged peacen­iks. The ori­gin­al now lies battered and bisec­ted in a museum, replaced by this bland piece of puff­ery. But even this seems to be send­ing odd mixed mes­sages. One of the images is a quick Pho­toshop job that recon­tex­tu­al­ises the fam­ous fern ball into an oddly retro ‘50s-style atom, with a back­ground of faded ones and zer­oes. What is this say­ing? That Civic Square is secretly a Jet­sons-era nuc­le­ar react­or, and that our IT industry is so hard­core that they still code in bin­ary?
Some of them are prob­ably cod­ing away right now, bur­ied away from the brisk, bright Sunday in anonym­ous con­crete build­ings not far from the high­way. It seems odd, in a way: all that escap­ist ima­gin­a­tion seeth­ing away amid the func­tion­al­ist shells of defunct factor­ies and super­seded avi­ation out­build­ings. But the area from Kil­birnie to Miramar has always been home to not just the hard real­it­ies of war, infra­struc­ture and industry (Rongotai’s Tiger Moth fact­ory, pa sites and forts around the pen­in­sula, fly­ing boats and gas­o­met­ers), but to enter­tain­ments and pop­u­list diver­sions (the Kil­birnie Speed­way, Centen­ni­al Exhib­i­tion, Wonderland’s aquat­ic rides). Lyall Bay once even had a wave machine. 

But the mix­ture of avi­ation and enter­tain­ment can be a risky one. A fun­drais­ing pageant for the Mac­gregor Memori­al Fund (“Mad Mac” Mac­gregor, ex-WWI fly­ing ace, died after clip­ping an anem­o­met­er pole at Ron­go­tai) went pear-shaped when the famed dare­dev­il para­chut­ist “Scotty” Fraser dared the dev­il once too often and reached ter­min­al velo­city in the shal­lows of the Bay. I haven’t heard of any Fraser Memori­al Spec­tac­u­lar: per­haps they didn’t want to push their luck.

The wind is get­ting up as I make my way between barbed wire and the hard-scraped edge of Ron­go­tai Ridge, head­ing towards the end of the air­port. At the next round­about I turn away from the bru­tal gouge of the Miramar Cut­ting — just one of the more vis­ible signs of a land con­stantly being sliced and priced, drained and con­tained — and walk beside the crisp slope of the runway’s north­ern end.

I crouch against the hur­ricane wire, point­ing my cam­era sky­wards, hop­ing to catch one of those pho­tos — you know the type — where a plane roars over­head just metres above me. Noth­ing. Still noth­ing. I settle for a couple of shots of the air­port infra­struc­ture (approach lights, wind­socks, mys­ter­i­ously brist­ling struc­tures), and in the end I find their sculp­tur­al qual­it­ies more sat­is­fy­ing than the typ­ic­al takeoff shot. Some of them rival the wind sculp­tures along the MEWS walk­way for their abstract form­al qual­it­ies.

Along­side the oth­er side of the run­way runs Jean Bat­ten Street and the Jean Bat­ten Garden, com­plete with laser-cut sign cel­eb­rat­ing “Hine o te Ran­gi – Daugh­ter of the Skies”. Hemmed in by barbed wire and the sul­len crouch of light industry, it’s hard to ima­gine a less glam­or­ous memori­al for the aviat­rix whose determ­in­a­tion and allure left a leg­acy of dar­ing avi­ation achieve­ments and pen­ni­less fiancés across the globe, before drift­ing into seclu­sion then end­ing in a mass grave in Majorca. The “Garbo of the Skies” monik­er sup­posedly arose from her glam­or­ous style and later reclus­ive­ness, though the sig­nage reminds us that she flew a Gypsy Moth with the call sign G‑AARB, which may have nudged the nick­name into exist­ence. 

My mind seems to be run­ning off on a tan­gent, away from the road that I’m walk­ing: per­haps it’s because I’m strug­gling to find a con­nec­tion between the loc­a­tion and the fig­ure com­mem­or­ated. There are pho­tos of Bat­ten at Ron­go­tai aero­drome, but it seems that neither she nor any of her fam­ous feats had any real asso­ci­ation with this city. The threads of nation­al sig­ni­fic­ance spin out across the globe, though they become tenu­ous with dis­tance, and I may be reach­ing too hard to find a psy­cho­geo­graph­ic­al con­nec­tion between Bat­ten and the com­ple­ment­ary indus­tries of avi­ation and enter­tain­ment that suf­fuse this place.

It’s one of the dilem­mas of the would-be psy­cho­geo­graph­er: immerse one­self in the deep con­nec­tions, or lose one­self in the sen­sa­tions of the moment? The sun grows fiercer, but is countered by a north­erly that is now firm enough to whip up white­caps on Evans Bay. The sound of traffic is build­ing, but still a dis­crete series of vehicles rather than a con­stant roar. On this side of the road, there is infra­struc­ture, cor­rod­ing industry and an attempt to claim an elu­sive hero; on the oth­er, there’s a recre­ation­al walk­way, a strip of salt-hardy plant­ing and the wide-open bay. Ahead of me, there’s a long road wind­ing its way across this ever-chan­ging isth­mus, the sandy umbil­icus that joins Motu Kair­angi to the former main­land.