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.