As I approach the tun­nel mouth, I can’t help but notice the loom­ing cliff to my right. I try to imag­ine the promised/threatened sec­ond tun­nel, and the impact that its east­ern por­tal will have on the land­scape. I envi­sion a giant tun­nel-bor­ing mole burst­ing from the moun­tain­side, like one of Dune’s Sand­worms, or the rogue tun­nel­ing machine that ter­roris­es New York in Jonathan Lethem’s Chron­ic City. 

The tun­nel itself seems invit­ing­ly cool at first, but the sen­sa­tion doesn’t last. Soon it’s a roar­ing, honk­ing, stink­ing hell, lit a sick­ly, sul­phurous yel­low. The acoustic and bronchial revul­sion is intense enough for any pedes­tri­an with the gall to invade this vehic­u­lar under­world, but I can’t rush: I need to linger, to record sen­sa­tions, to gauge and engage with the tun­nel as a place, not just a route. Some­one has scrawled “Wel­come to the gas cham­ber” at the entrance.  Las­ci­ate ogne sper­an­za, voi ch’entrate.

If this is the lair of a dev­il, it’s sure­ly a horned one. The ori­gins of the “beep­ing game” are dis­put­ed: some claim that it orig­i­nat­ed as a trib­ute to Phillis Symons, while oth­ers sug­gest that in its ear­ly years the tunnel’s pri­ma­ry traf­fic was on foot, so the few dri­vers used their horns to warn pedes­tri­ans. Now it per­pet­u­ates itself, an emp­ty sym­bol, a rit­u­al car­ried on pure­ly for its own sake. It’s the degree zero of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, lan­guage reduced to plain­tive one-note sig­nals, reach­ing out from one hurtling met­al cage to anoth­er, remind­ing each oth­er that human beings are inside.
Oth­er humans have tak­en the time to reg­is­ter more nuanced mes­sages on the walls and floor of the pedes­tri­ans’ nar­row refuge. There are Pac­man ghosts, watch­ful and mute; rough-sten­ciled polit­i­cal slo­gans (“TO BE WHITE AND IGNORE/WHITE PRIVILEGE/IS TO ENSURE THAT/THIS SOCIETY STAYS RACIST”); body out­lines invad­ed by totemic ani­mals. One poster has become the site for a pithy dis­course on the gen­tri­fi­ca­tion of the anti-cap­i­tal­ist move­ment — “FUCK CAPITALISM!” leads to “Fuck­ing hip­ster you care more about clothes” — before spi­ralling off into irony and sole­cism. “I’d rather be iron­ing”, “Ger­ry & the pace­mak­ers”. 
It’s a relief to be out in the real world again, though the trench con­tin­ues as a deep raw cut, so I’m still some way from any­thing resem­bling nat­ur­al land. The north side is proud of itself — all crisply-engi­neered con­crete and brass plaques — but the south side is a bodge of lazy and lep­rous shot­crete.  Above the cut­ting runs Pater­son St, one more poten­tial vic­tim of the hun­gry high­way. The tun­nel, a short­cut born of Depres­sion, cheap labour and a dogged faith in the auto­mo­bile, is prepar­ing for fur­ther expan­sion. It’s time has returned. 

Among the threat­ened hous­es is num­ber 7, tucked back behind a non­de­script block, but with a “fan­cy colo­nial” style and sweep­ing dri­ve­way that attest to its grander his­to­ry. It was built for War­ing Tay­lor (politi­cian, fraud­ster, “well-mean­ing mud­dler”), and is like­ly to have been vis­it­ed by his sis­ter Mary (shop­keep­er, pio­neer fem­i­nist, del­i­cate­ly described as a “close friend” of Char­lotte Bron­të). For decades it was the “Archbishop’s House”, but more recent­ly it has been infa­mous as the venue for spec­tac­u­lar­ly riotous par­ties. A Pater­son St par­ty was some­thing of a rite of pas­sage among cer­tain sec­tors of young Welling­ton: my own expe­ri­ences were nec­es­sar­i­ly hazy, though I remem­ber the artists, the DJs, the actress­es (espe­cial­ly the actress­es).

The road swoops again, seem­ing­ly deflect­ed by the curv­ing con­crete bas­tions of St Joseph’s. From the air, the plan is a mashup of cross and koru, but at ground lev­el it seems defen­sive, a shield of blast walls to shel­ter the con­gre­ga­tion from the seething traf­fic. The con­crete is engraved with a pat­tern that could be waves, scales, or fish, but if they are indeed Jesus fish, then they’re very mixed-up Ichthys: through rep­e­ti­tion and Escheresque over­laps, they could be swim­ming either up or down the high­way.

Come to think of it, I can’t tell whether my own jour­ney is upstream or down­stream. Is the air­port the source of Wellington’s Road of Nation­al Sig­nif­i­cance, or its mouth; the spring, or the estu­ary where it los­es itself in the salty ocean of glob­al trav­el? It’s an appo­site thought as the stream begins to split, sep­a­rate into north­bound and south­bound arms as it hits the fis­sured and con­test­ed grid of Te Aro.