It’s a giv­en: New Zea­l­and is a young land. But this infant isth­mus, earth­quake-raised, has already suffered abuses and trans­form­a­tions that have left it far from tender. If psy­cho­geo­graphy is, as Iain Sin­clair says, “a way of psy­cho­ana­lys­ing the psy­chos­is of the place in which I hap­pen to live”, then this place will be on the couch for a long time to come. 

From the start, it was seen as treach­er­ous: even tani­wha would have been advised to steer clear. When the first streets cut across the sandhills, to European eyes it was a use­less stretch of unstable dunes and swamp­land, low on the list of exploit­a­tion pri­or­it­ies. Pakeha brought ver­min: gen­er­a­tions of chil­dren knew Tir­angi Road as “Rab­bit Hill”, and until very recently the round­abouts of Cobham Drive were well-known war­rens. There were reclam­a­tions (I’m walk­ing a couple of blocks out from the ori­gin­al shore), bull­doz­ings (for Exhib­i­tion and air­port), run­way exten­sions and mil­it­ary tar­get prac­tice. The flat, wide, fea­ture­less expanse of Kilbirnie/Rongotai is a con­veni­ent fic­tion con­jured into com­mer­cial real­ity.

Land as machine, the engine of the eco­nomy. From the sky, round­abouts are gears, the run­way is a steel truss, and arter­i­al roads snake like hydraul­ic cables, pump­ing work­ers through the sys­tem. From the ground, the machine looks less well-oiled (stained con­crete, burnt-out cor­rug­ate), but there’s some­thing def­in­itely unheim­lich about this arti­fi­cial earth: neither nature nor urban­ity; not sub­ur­bia yet not quite edge­lands. Even the emer­ging sta­di­um rev­els in engin­eer­ing imagery — aero­foil, air fil­ter, tur­bine — and it seems ready to turn if the wind picks up, grind­ing out elec­tri­city more effi­ciently than Andrew Drummond’s van­dal-mag­net Tower of the Winds nearby.

What energy there is seems designed for propul­sion (or per­haps repul­sion). I catch its drift and keep mov­ing, though press­ing up against the ped­es­tri­an-res­ist­ant south­ern edge of Cobham Drive rather than the optim­ist­ic­ally scen­ic walk­way at the water’s cur­rent edge. Retail hulks turn their con­crete backs to the road. The signs are gen­er­ic, faded through repe­ti­tion, though one bill­board attains a degree of char­ac­ter by dint of sheer eye-water­ing ugli­ness: UNCLE BILLS Whole­sale Club. Uncle Bill seems to have a small rodent stuck up his nos­tril, its tail a rogue cedilla dangling across his philtrum — or per­haps it’s just an orphan apo­strophe that escaped from the brand name.
Atav­ist­ic sand dunes bulge around the edges of play­ing fields, and the school build­ings are Bru­tal­ist bunkers par excel­lence. Everything hunkers down against the expect­a­tion of wind, or per­haps against the road itself, a more pre­dict­able daily tem­pest that roars across the con­crete edges. The archi­tec­tur­al high­light is a chapel like a chiseled mono­chrome Corbu, St Patrick look­ing incon­gru­ously real­ist on his after­thought alcove. 

It’s anoth­er remind­er of tran­si­ence, of the tend­ency for mean­ings and objects to slip and slide along the spine of the high­way. For St Pat’s Col­lege was once across the road from the Basin Reserve, where it stood in the way of the 1960s motor­way exten­sion. Deals were done, and the boys trekked east. Exile goes both ways: when the Centen­ni­al Exhib­i­tion staggered to its death, Kupe & Co were shipped out to the rail­way sta­tion before assum­ing their water­front vigil, and the fountain’s hid­den engines were trucked up to Kel­burn Park. Even the air­port was once lost to the isth­mus, clos­ing in 1947, and oper­a­tions shif­ted to Par­a­pa­raumu until Ron­go­tai could be reborn as a prop­er inter­na­tion­al air­port (or at least a mod­est imit­a­tion there­of).

More inter­sec­tions, more play­ing fields, more traffic. The dairy on the corner is boarded up, upper win­dows obscured by a bill­board: a woman, grin­ning, glow­ing, clutch­ing the ubi­quit­ous Pump bottle. “Feel­ing good/is a choice…//habit, health, hap­pi­ness”. We used to walk to the dairy; now we drive to the gym, sit­ting at the lights while air­brushed toothy mod­els tell us about choice.

Rua­hine St begins as a rude cut through hard yel­low earth. Someone (pre­sum­ably “Steve”) has cut a more tender inscrip­tion — STEVE LOVES YOU <3 — though the object of his affec­tions has been washed and blown away. Rough paths lead invit­ingly into the cool, piney Town Belt, but the sun ham­mers down on the bur­geon­ing traffic, and onto the patchy green slopes of Hataitai Park. Born from the guts of the Mt Vic tun­nel — and on at least one occa­sion, the body of a murder vic­tim — the park feels off-kil­ter, left-over, unpeopled.

Part­way up the slope, there’s a low dais of rock, half-sheltered by spindly shrubs. It resembles a shrine, or a spring, or at least some­thing that marks the loc­a­tion of a moment­ous event. Once I’ve climbed the slope I find my last guess par­tially cor­rect: it hon­ours the mil­it­ary dead of WWII, but shows no con­nec­tion to this par­tic­u­lar spot. This may have been a mil­it­ary camp dur­ing the last war, but oth­er­wise the link to Crete and oth­er battles seems faint at best. Lost in the green­sward, the barely-legible inscrip­tion on a lop­sided marble slab seems almost to apo­lo­gise for this irrel­ev­ance. Poor Phil­lis Symons — bludgeoned with a pipe and dumped in the spoil by her tun­nel-dig­ger lov­er, after he failed to pro­cure her abor­tion — still awaits her memori­al. These places hon­our the dis­tant, and for­get the loc­al. 

The land beside the road has a des­ig­na­tion, allow­ing for two more lanes. It will slice fur­ther into the awk­ward slope of the park (clearly not nat­ur­al, but not quite flat enough to be use­ful). And in places, it might crib a little more space towards the east­ern houses, eras­ing the last vestige of the stream (little more than a ditch, signaled by tox­ic lilies and the barest hint of a trickle) that runs between the road and Roger Walker’s Park Mews. In its cur­rent white and blue liv­ery, there’s less to jus­ti­fy the pre­dict­able “Noddy House” epi­thet, and per­haps just a hint of Neuwan­schtein with its spires and embras­ures. Or maybe it’s the sun and the fumes that are giv­ing me a touch of Mad Prince Lud­wig.

The first ped­es­tri­an bridge of the jour­ney, rear­ing up on spindly wooden legs across a bend in the high­way, sig­nals the approach to the tun­nel. Philo­soph­ic­al graf­fiti (COGITO ERGO SUM, FREE-DOM) tease the mind, but the body is more inter­ested in escap­ing the heat and seek­ing sug­ary snacks among the Hataitai shops. The French Bakery, though per­haps lack­ing in Gal­lic verisimil­it­ude, deliv­ers admir­ably. I eat among the pohu­tukawa shade that stretches between pub­lic toi­lets, kinder­garten, Town Belt and the highway’s urgent curve. An acquaint­ance (a walk­ing advoc­ate, if I were look­ing for irony) drives past — I wave, acknow­ledging the archetyp­al “small Wel­ling­ton” moment — and then I’m ready to approach the roar­ing portal.