Notional Significance: Gully

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The path bends with the motor­way, peel­ing away from the hills, present­ing a widescreen pan­or­ama of res­id­en­tial Thorndon. I can see what remains of the gul­lies into which the high­way has wedged itself: from the all-but-van­ished Honeyman’s Gully (once a duelling ground for law­yers, then filled in for the less fatal con­tests of Ander­son Park), Sydney Street’s dank val­ley, then set­tling down beside Tinakori Rd and on through the former Hob­son St gully, which until the motor­way came through could only be crossed via swing bridge. Behind it all, Te Ahu-mai-ran­gi (aka Tinakori Hill, aka Mt Wake­field) looms like a vast green wave, now partly denuded in the hope of a nat­ive renais­sance, but still con­ceal­ing quar­ries and tun­nels (the lust for gold) in its darkly hid­den folds.

Between hill and high­way lies a nar­row band of houses, many of which are home to the sort of people that inspired the t‑shirt slo­gan “Thorndon: Look­ing Down on the Rest of Wel­ling­ton Since 1840”. And though this was once a rep­res­ent­at­ive core-sample through a strat­i­fied soci­ety (grand man­sions, proud vil­las, mean little work­ers’ shacks), you won’t find much of the pro­let­ari­at here today. If there are social divi­sions now, they’re per­haps exem­pli­fied by ant­ag­on­isms between two middle-class gangs: the Thorndon Soci­ety vs the Thorndon Res­id­ents Asso­ci­ation. The former are seen as Old Thorndon­ites (lin­en-jack­eted her­it­age archi­tects, clas­sic­ally-edu­cated mat­rons resplen­dent in hand­craf­ted broaches), staunch vet­er­ans of the Motor­way Wars still proud of the con­ces­sions they wrung from the Min­istry, and with a mix­ture of self-deprec­a­tion and half-joc­u­lar hubris they are able to cari­ca­ture them­selves as the “Thorndon Mafia”. The lat­ter might be seen as new­comers, law­yered-up social climbers keen on a Thorndon address but not on the life­style lim­it­a­tions of a bijoux cot­tage, and under the liber­tari­an ban­ner of “private prop­erty rights” (the inali­en­able rights of the ali­en Right) they’ll rage against any­one who tries to stop them bunging on a double gar­age, satel­lite dish and media room.
For those of us who asso­ci­ate Thorndon with this sort of bour­geois smug­gery and house-price-obsessed baby­boomer tedi­um, it’s sur­pris­ing to learn that it wasn’t always asso­ci­ated with social pro­pri­ety. In fact, it could be a down­right riot. Under Sir Juli­us Vogel, Premi­er House became so notori­ous for its bac­ch­ic fancy-dress parties that it was nick­named “The Casino”. Head­lines panted about “Gay Goings-on in Gor­ing St”, where jazz-age dec­ad­ence ruled at a “most exclus­ive” cab­aret. The bohemi­ans got in on the act as well, and it was at that cab­aret that Iris Wilkin­son (the future Robin Hyde) learned the latest dance moves from the fam­ous Miss Bor­lase. After their brief affair, Rita Angus and Douglas Lil­burn lived as Ascot St neigh­bours, she in her cot­tage con­jur­ing men­acing cloud­scapes above the tin roofs, while he com­posed for an elec­tron­ic future in his black and white mod­ern­ist house. Fleur Adcock (and her new lov­er) lived with her pre­vi­ous lov­er Alistair Camp­bell (and his new wife Meg) in what must have been an emo­tion­ally crowded Tinakori Rd house. Today, the Moor­ings is known as much for booze-saoked arty parties in its styl­ishly disheveled ball­room as for its his­tory and archi­tec­ture. Kath­er­ine Mans­field could have waited, and Blooms­bury might have come to Thorndon.

But of those goings-on were going-on across the gully, where­as on this side I find myself trail­ing along the flank of insti­tu­tion­al Thorndon: min­is­tries and embassies, schools and churches, memori­als and ten­nis clubs. There are towers on nearby Moles­worth St, but here the archi­tec­ture takes its cues from the motor­way — long, low and infra­struc­tur­al, the Cor­res­pond­ence School is text­book Bru­tal­ism, while the Min­istry of Health is a PoMo zig­gur­at in sleek white­wash and smoked glass.

By now, I’m walk­ing par­al­lel to the Wel­ling­ton Fault, the strongest influ­ence on the inter­sect­ing grids of Thorndon. Grant Rd and Tinakori Rd flank the fault zone itself, a hid­den battle­ground of crushed and twis­ted rock at the base of Te Ahu-mai-rangi’s viol­ent scarp. The oth­er shaper of the street pat­tern is Thorndon Quay, the former Esplanade that sent par­al­lel ripples inland to define Hob­son and Murphy St. In between, though, there’s a ves­ti­gi­al grid formed around the axis of Moles­worth St, and no obvi­ous geo­graph­ic­al fea­tures to drive it. Were the lines of Hill and Hawke­stone St drawn to roughly fol­low the Pip­itea and Waipiro streams, and then Moles­worth drawn per­pen­dic­u­lar to these? Instead, I like to think that Moles­worth St was inten­tion­ally aligned with the dis­tant peak of Mt Kaukau, and indeed it’s an exact straight line from the gov­ern­ment canyon to the com­mu­nic­a­tions mast that winks every night in the windswept north­ern sub­urbs. It would strike a note of form­al align­ment that’s usu­ally absent from our city: oth­er­wise, our roads fol­low faults, scarps and gul­lies, not lines of power but of weak­ness, of least res­ist­ance.

The path beside the motor­way is littered with plaques. One bears a name that can still send shivers through any­one of a cer­tain age: OFFICIALLY OPENED BY RT HON R D MULDOON C.H., PRIME MINISTER. Oth­ers are self-con­grat­u­lat­ory, crow­ing of engin­eer­ing awards (“Out­stand­ing design and care for the sur­round­ings have restored and enhanced the qual­ity of the envir­on­ment tra­versed by this new road”). And indeed Ein­horn seems to have been hav­ing fun here, espe­cially with the vari­ety of sup­ports for the over­bridges. I give them names: this is the Her­ring­bone, this the Spring­board; these are the Cubist Trousers and this one’s the Fly­ing V.

Recent addi­tions lack any­thing resem­bling whimsy, or indeed any semb­lance of grace. New elec­tron­ic signs are borne on lum­ber­ing met­al gantries, grot­esquely over-engin­eered and encrus­ted with cam­er­as and barbed wire. It’s as if a few LEDs carry the entire weight of the motor­way sys­tem, the bits and bytes of traffic data carved in stone rather than flick­ers of light and elec­tri­city. It car­ries me back to the bill­boards at the start of the high­way — massive legs bear­ing flimsy advert­ising mes­sages — and all the heavy met­al infra­struc­ture required to gath­er, trans­mit and dis­play incor­por­eal inform­a­tion. Cell­phone towers, repeat­er sta­tions, stumpy pil­lars for incon­gru­ously dainty cam­er­as. It seems that the sym­bol­ic eco­nomy is far from weight­less.

I wind away from the motor­way clam­our, seek­ing a lunch break in the Sum­mit build­ing. It’s a bold wedge, mark­ing the con­flu­ence of Moles­worth and Murphy streets just short of the motor­way — three M’s, one for each of the three Thorndon grids. Its elev­a­tions are also grids, their faux-Mon­dri­an col­ours begin­ning to fade after only a few years in the sun and wind. Caf­feine and cold water do their trick. It’s my first real stop since Ghuznee St, the sun beat­ing down relent­lessly on a rare still after­noon, and I’ve many kilo­metres of high­way-chas­ing still to go today. Across the street, the Amer­ic­an embassy is an essay in imper­i­al­ist para­noia (per­haps not unjus­ti­fied giv­en attacks on their embassies in more volat­ile coun­tries), brist­ling with masts and flag­poles (mes­sages slyly inter­cep­ted or proudly flown), cam­er­as and tank­traps, dishes and domes. Even from inside the cafe, I feel nervous about tak­ing pho­tos, almost wor­ried that the guards might charge across the road and grab my cam­era. Per­haps I should have shaved.

Replen­ished, I wander on and into more salu­bri­ous sur­round­ings. Kath­er­ine Mans­field Memori­al Park (anoth­er Ein­horn design) and Kath­er­ine Ave recall Thorndon’s favour­ite daugh­ter (or at least, the favour­ite daugh­ter of its her­it­age industry), even if on this side of the high­way all traces of her pres­ence are gone. The park wears its 1960s provid­ence well: per­golas, brick seat­ing nooks and gently curving berms all speak of a human­ist Mod­ern­ism, inter­woven with the bosky shade of older trees. The Lady McK­en­zie Garden for the Blind is a refuge from the bois­ter­ous play­ground, though the tar­get demo­graph­ic for this garden would miss the more arrest­ing park users on this unchar­ac­ter­ist­ic­ally hot day: a pair of near-naked sun­bathers. I put away my cam­era to avoid any unseemly alleg­a­tions, and cross Hob­son St to the side of the Ger­man Embassy.

I had planned to simply fol­low this last stretch of motor­way path to the end of the bluff, then down to Thorndon Quay, but when I’m nearly there I notice a roughly-beaten path that leads up through the scrag­gly veget­a­tion to my right. I scramble up, duck­ing under branches, and come across the unavoid­able signs of hab­it­a­tion. An impro­vised ham­mock; the battered met­al frame of an office chair; bottles, bags and the dry ashes of bon­fires. The scrub opens up, through trees reduced to bony stumps, reveal­ing a hid­den grassy clear­ing, a lookout wedged between high fences, cliffs and razor­wire. From here I can see the wide grey tumble of the rail­yards, the hills and glassy har­bour, and the motor­way swoop­ing out on con­crete legs, reach­ing for the dis­tance. It’s a com­mand­ing view, but the detrit­us around me tells me that for the occu­pants of this invis­ible eyrie, this is not the sort of “look­ing down on Wel­ling­ton” that the t‑shirt was talk­ing about.