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.