Notional Significance: Clearing

 [See all Notion­al Sig­nif­i­cance posts]

The offramp leads me down into what, for want of a bet­ter term, I will call the heart of John­sonville. The local RSA greets me with a Bofors gun and an ad for its epony­mous restau­rant (“Fam­i­ly Friend­ly Envi­ron­ment”). Along with the Sal­va­tion Army, Super Liquor, a ser­vice sta­tion and a fast food chain, this forms the south­ern gate­way to the cap­i­tal of the north­ern sub­urbs: a tan­gled semi­otic spaghet­ti of war, booze and reli­gion; con­ve­nience, glut­tony and fam­i­ly; topped off with a slick of oil. The Kiwi dream.

The main road is a hap­haz­ard strip of chain stores and brave but unre­mark­able local enter­pris­es. I need one last snack to round off the long day’s walk from Ghuznee St, and I remem­ber the cru­el joke: “What’s unique and worth­while in John­sonville? Nada.” So I stop at the self-pro­claimed “NZ’s great­est bak­ery” for an admit­ted­ly bet­ter-than-aver­age savoury roll, before cut­ting back to the rail­way sta­tion through a mall that seems all the more lost and desul­to­ry when seen against glis­ten­ing future visions of the mall-to-come.

A week lat­er I return to John­sonville, prepar­ing for the next leg. For the third Sun­day in a row, it’s preter­nat­u­ral­ly hot and still, and in oth­er cir­cum­stances, it could be called glo­ri­ous. The train wrig­gles and clat­ters through gorges and cosy inland val­leys, Ngaio’s Tarika­ka rail­way set­tle­ment recall­ing the days when the Welling­ton-Man­awatu line was the hero­ic pre­cur­sor to the North Island Main Trunk Line. But the car­riages now squeal to a rude halt at John­sonville, the way blocked by a rough-edged con­crete cuboid, the for­mer main line still faint­ly leg­i­ble in the soft curve of Moore­field Rd.

Fur­ther along the street, strand­ed between the med­ical cen­tre and an estate agent’s, a memo­r­i­al lamp­post (“Erect­ed by his friends to the mem­o­ry of the late Tr. L. C. Ret­ter who fell at the bat­tle of Both­as­burg, South Africa”) stands out as a rare rem­nant of the past. Behind it, a con­crete balustrade looks like half of a bridge, though it has no com­pan­ion across the road, just a McDon­alds carpark. Once the stream enters the under­world beneath the balustrade, there’s no hint of where it might end up. For John­sonville strad­dles a cusp between two catch­ments, and the waters in this glo­ri­fied ditch might end up in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, or they might begin the long fall towards Porirua and the Tas­man Sea. From a hydro­log­i­cal per­spec­tive, per­haps this should be the “nat­ur­al” north­ern bound­ary of Welling­ton, where the grav­i­ta­tion­al pull of Port Nichol­son final­ly los­es its influ­ence and the lay of the land­scape begins to tilt north­wards. But the flat­ness of the John­sonville basin induces weight­less­ness and inde­ci­sion. The streams mean­der lethar­gi­cal­ly between lots, pop­ping up in back yards before slith­er­ing back into cul­verts, for­get­ting their way just as they them­selves are for­got­ten beneath the sub­ur­ban plat.

But hunger has its own grav­i­ty, and I’m drawn on in search of hon­est stodge in a greasy-spoon caff. I nego­ti­ate the Scyl­la and Charib­dis of McDon­alds and KFC, pass up on the appetis­ing com­bi­na­tion of “Health Shop J’Ville” and “The Roast Can­teen” (both con­ve­nient­ly locat­ed beneath the Lych­gate funer­al home), and set­tle on some­thing called “Fresh Bun”. This seems at first like the clos­est approach to hon­esty, but then appears to be a Mr Bun ripoff: a one-off low-rent sub­ur­ban café, imi­tat­ing a nation­wide chain of low-rent sub­ur­ban cafés, that are in turn a mass-pro­duced com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the tra­di­tion­al Kiwi low-rent sub­ur­ban café. Bau­drillard would be suf­fer­ing a sim­u­lacrum migraine by this stage, as he con­tem­plates the repli­ca Chi­nese swords and dusty plas­tic daf­fodils beneath the acoustic tiles, but I’m under­go­ing the tran­si­tion between what Kings­ley Amis called the phys­i­cal and the meta­phys­i­cal hang­overs. I need hearty sat­u­rat­ed fats and strong black cof­fee; what I get is an amor­phous pud­dle of scram­bled eggs that com­petes in pal­lor with the sog­gy, bare­ly toast­er-kissed white bread, and the sort of impotable bat­tery acid that even the Amer­i­cans have learned to stop call­ing “cof­fee”. I check the news on my phone, and raise an eye­brow at the name of the WiFi net­work that pops up: “Saint Death”.

Grease-laden and under­caf­feinat­ed, I head briefly south­wards then up a nar­row ser­vice road called Nor­man Lane. Here, among autoshops, cell­phone tow­ers and the back walls of a retail park, John­sonville buries a bit more of its past. The Methodist Church was demol­ished in the Sev­en­ties, but its ceme­tery lives on, pressed on all sides by asphalt and steel, stones sink­ing into con­crete or leaned upon by work­shop walls.

The lane bends left, sidles between ware­hous­es and the high­way bar­ri­ers, and brings me to the true apex of the motor­way. I stand beside the stream of cars and trucks, lis­ten­ing to their Dopplered howl, feel­ing the pen­dent moment between ascent and descent, like the halfway mark of a domes­tic flight when the jets relax and you sense the island slide beneath you. And at this very moment — with­in reach of the tar­mac, sur­round­ed by ribbed arm­co, stained con­crete, no-ques­tions-asked Best West­erns and ripped fish­nets of chain-link fenc­ing — I’m treat­ed to the per­fect Bal­lar­dian spec­ta­cle of a ’58 Cadil­lac, all fetishis­tic chrome, slith­ery fins and gap­ing radi­a­tor maw, speed­ing towards me. A flash of sil­ver and aqua­ma­rine, and it’s gone, its tur­bu­lent wake pluck­ing at my shirt, and I’m back in the mun­dane gorse-rid­den present.

Will Self praised J.G. Bal­lard as “the purest psy­cho­geo­g­ra­ph­er of us all, ever dis­solv­ing the par­tic­u­lar and the his­tor­i­cal in the tran­sient and the psy­chic”, and that’s what strikes me about this trans­for­ma­tion of a moment. While Self’s friend Nick Papadim­itri­ou once wry­ly not­ed that most psy­cho­geo­g­ra­phers “are real­ly only local his­to­ri­ans with an atti­tude prob­lem”, the move­ment has the poten­tial and per­haps even the respon­si­bil­i­ty to go beyond that. It’s this real­i­sa­tion that helps me get over my ambiva­lence towards writ­ers who impose ten­u­ous mys­ti­cal nar­ra­tives onto straight­for­ward con­tem­po­rary land­scapes. Like Sinclair’s ley-lines, Sebald’s her­rings and Chtcheglov’s “ghosts bear­ing all the pres­tige of their leg­ends”, the Cadillac’s gleam­ing Amer­i­can mus­cle enacts a totemic alche­my, tan­gling the imag­i­nary into the fab­ric of real­i­ty, teas­ing a new sig­nif­i­cance from the bare fac­tu­al strands of his­to­ry and obser­va­tion.

Bal­lard and Sin­clair would each have their own read­ing of the under­pass that slides beneath the car­riage­way. The walls are an urban palimpsest of tags and taunts — a des­per­ate col­lage of names, icons, sex­u­al frus­tra­tions (“TREV CAN’T GET IT UP”), greed (“ALL ‘BOUT/MONEY”) and racial defi­ance (“BLACKPOWER”) — but the laneway then emerges from the under­world into the com­fort­able sub­ur­bia of Arthur Car­man St. NZTA’s new con­trol rooms do their best to dis­creet­ly set­tle into the domes­tic scene, dressed in a mod­est moder­ni­ty that’s a taste­ful devo­lu­tion from the spik­i­ly hon­est for­mer com­plex on the oth­er side of Hel­ston Rd over­bridge.

It’s this bridge, with deft­ly-poised sup­ports evok­ing the con­crete dynamism of a div­ing board next to a Bond villain’s swim­ming pool, that reminds me that John­sonville was once the future. For the stretch of road between here and Porirua was the first motor­way in New Zealand, con­struct­ed smack bang in the opti­mistic mid­dle of the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry. That was indeed a nation­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant moment: the birth of the motorised dream where­by speed, space and con­ve­nience added up to free­dom. The north­ern sub­urbs bloomed along the motorway’s banks, fed by cheap oil and liv­ing on the but­ter­fat of the land, attempt­ing to trans­late Godzone’s bucol­ic ori­gin myths into the bur­geon­ing city, one quar­ter-acre at a time.

And while the Kiwi dream is more than a lit­tle Amer­i­can in ori­gin, did this new sub­ur­ban idyll also have a nation­al­ist sig­nif­i­cance? We all know Denis Glover’s pithy state­ments of lit­er­ary nation­al­ism (“I do not dream of Sus­sex downs/or quaint old England’s/quaint old towns/I think of what may yet be seen/in John­sonville or Geral­dine”), but was he real­ly antic­i­pat­ing a post-colo­nial sub­ur­ban heav­en? Did Glover dream of off-ramps, dri­ve-thrus and chain stores? I doubt it, for when he wrote “Home Thoughts” in 1936, John­sonville was far from an exem­plar of met­ro­pol­i­tan sub­ur­bia, and in fact it was not all that dif­fer­ent from Geral­dine. It tru­ly was the vil­lage that it some­times claims to be, with stock­yards still oper­at­ing at its cen­tre and cat­tle dri­ven through the rough streets to the Ngau­ran­ga slaugh­ter­house. Now, John­sonville is at the oth­er end of the killing chain: it’s the cus­tomers who dri­ve to the prod­ucts of slaugh­ter, cir­cling the dri­ve-in burg­eries, the brand­ed feed-lots. Con­sumer as prod­uct.

Between the two Hel­ston Road over­bridges, between the obso­les­cent NZTA instal­la­tion and the stump of Frank John­son St, the view is com­mand­ing. Some­where near here was the site of Clifford’s Stock­ade, one of a string of crude mili­tia sta­tions erect­ed along the Old Porirua Road in the wake of the Wairau Mas­sacre: in the Euro­cen­tric rhetoric of the day, “for the pur­pose of pre­vent­ing any preda­to­ry incur­sions of the natives”. This would have been a con­nec­tion to some of New Zealand’s defin­ing moments, to the cam­paigns of Te Rangi­haea­ta and Te Rau­para­ha and the schemes of Gov­er­nor Grey, but the site has been cleared of all traces. As archae­ol­o­gists said of the site, “ridge was cut by motor­way. Noth­ing to see.”

Oblit­er­a­tion of his­to­ry is always part of the motor­way deal, but the act of clear­ing away is a defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of John­sonville: before it was even a Ville, it was Johnson’s Clear­ing. “Clear­ing” could be read as a verb, and indeed Mr Johnson’s sawmill would have been the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of much of that clear­ing, but in its geo­graph­i­cal role as a noun it is defined by lack, by what it is not. The salient prop­er­ty of a clear­ing is the absence of for­est, and the prac­ti­cal pos­si­bil­i­ties that such an empti­ness enables. John­sonville was born from such prag­ma­tism, and today things are still being cleared away and start­ed anew.

Even the one real his­toric land­mark in the town cen­tre, St John’s Church, is the result of repeat­ed oblit­er­a­tions and rebuild­ings. It is the fifth church on the site: the oth­ers suc­cumbed to fire, but the parish­ioners start­ed over again and again, main­tain­ing con­ti­nu­ity of wor­ship on this stub­born­ly church­wor­thy emi­nence. But anoth­er era­sure has been at work here, one that was willed by the church rather than imposed by mis­for­tune. I’d hoped to find the grave of the Branks fam­i­ly, vic­tims of an appar­ent­ly arbi­trary numer­i­cal utu (Henare Maro­ro vowed to take one pāke­hā life for each year he had spent in prison; wid­ow­er John Branks and his three chil­dren hap­pened to be the ones to feel his axe), but the front of the church is plain, fea­ture­less grass. In the 1960s, mind­ful of the costs of man­u­al­ly tend­ing a grave­yard, the church fathers had it con­vert­ed to a lawn ceme­tery. As the Bolton St ceme­tery had to be sac­ri­ficed for speed, the mem­o­ries of St Johns’ faith­ful dead were lost in the name of con­ve­nient main­te­nance. Uncho­sen, unmarked, the Branks fam­i­ly rests unseen, their bod­ies fold­ed into the for­get­ful earth, some­where beneath the respectable, easy-care lawn of the grav­e­less grave­yard. Noth­ing to see.

I’m tempt­ed to write that the pres­ence of death is pal­pa­ble beneath the wide streets of John­sonville, but this is where the fan­ta­sy of psy­cho­geo­graph­i­cal deter­min­ism, of the inerad­i­ca­ble genius loci, is so mis­lead­ing­ly seduc­tive. It’s true that the Branks were not the last John­sonvil­lians to be hacked to death in their beds, and that the logos of funer­al homes com­pete with fast food out­lets for domin­ion over the streetscape. But giv­en a sin­gle vis­it, geog­ra­phy can­not be dis­en­gaged from his­to­ry, let alone from per­son­al expe­ri­ence and mood. Today is the first Sun­day since the 22nd of Feb­ru­ary. A flag hangs limp. Half mast. A cler­gy­man leads a small con­gre­ga­tion in an out­door memo­r­i­al ser­vice, cool amid the deep shad­ow of a macro­carpa hedge. Nation­al tragedy is lay­ered over per­son­al melan­cho­lia, which in turn colours the fad­ed sig­nals of any time­less pat­terns that I might try to dis­cern amid the shift­ing land­scape.

But if I am to trust my instincts about this place, per­haps what I’m sens­ing is not the close­ness of death. Per­haps it’s just that this far away from the child­less lib­er­al bub­ble of down­town, with its willed or unwilled sus­pen­sion of gen­er­a­tion, the whole hon­est cycle of life is proud­ly expressed: get born, go to school, get a job, get mar­ried, get a mort­gage, breed, retire … and head to your grave watch­ing your off­spring begin the same cycle. The met­ro­pol­i­tan snob in me wants to say that this sub­urb offers noth­ing more than fast food, a slow death, and a qui­et for­get­ting. But while the land­scape of era­sure (buried streams, cleansed ceme­ter­ies, sev­ered rail­ways) encour­ages this cyn­i­cal read­ing, the truth is that John­sonville is lay­ered not with expunged pasts but with van­ished futures. Each of Johnsonville’s pasts was a dream of tomor­row: of a day when the church won’t burn down, when the motorway’s sleek curves brings speed and free­dom, when the stul­ti­fy­ing cob­webs of the old coun­try are blown away by the inter­na­tion­al glam­our of a big­ger, brighter mall.

The same could be said of any out­er sub­urb or any provin­cial town in New Zealand. If Welling­ton is sup­posed to be young, urbane and self-con­scious­ly well-edu­cat­ed, then maybe this is where “Welling­ton” ends and “New Zealand” begins. The sec­tions may no longer be quite a quar­ter acre, the beer may now come in stub­bies rather than half-gal­lons, and the pavlo­va comes frozen from Count­down, but par­adise can still be found in fam­i­ly, per­son­al space, con­for­mi­ty, secu­ri­ty and con­ve­nience: all under­writ­ten by the motor vehi­cle. Along Mid­dle­ton Road, beyond the roar­ing gyre of the round­about, I press on, deep into New Zealand.