Notional Significance: Downstream

[See all Notion­al Sig­nif­i­cance posts]

My nar­ra­tive has been marooned in John­sonville for over eight months, a fate that, if not actu­al­ly worse than death, is per­ilous­ly close to it. In fact, it is exact­ly a year since I walked this sec­tion of road, and last week’s remem­brance was the spur I need­ed to get the writ­ing going again. So I resume, hav­ing left the hydro­log­i­cal pull of Welling­ton, fol­low­ing State High­way 1 down­stream and deep­er into New Zealand.

Mid­dle­ton Road winds lazi­ly down the val­ley, a non­de­script sub­ur­ban street, while the motor­way hums away invis­i­bly behind its arbo­re­al screen. There’s the faintest sense of a buried stream, some­where down in the filled-in gul­ly, where the hous­es some­how con­trive to look dark and damp even in the harsh sum­mer sun. Noth­ing could be fur­ther from nation­al sig­nif­i­cance.

But soon a steep, scrub­by bank ris­es to my left, and this is where the Old Porirua Road once nego­ti­at­ed a per­ilous incline from what’s now Bas­sett Road down to where I’m now walk­ing. It was so steep and dif­fi­cult that it was known as “Russell’s Fol­ly” for gen­er­a­tions after it was bypassed, and Cap­tain Russell’s rep­u­ta­tion nev­er quite recov­ered from his dubi­ous engi­neer­ing deci­sions. Some time after his reg­i­ment forced the road through this treach­er­ous ter­rain, in the tense years of Ngāti Toa’s resis­tance cam­paigns, a gun wag­on failed to take the grade and crashed down the bluff, where its can­nons were lost in the swampy stream below. This was not just the main road in and out of Welling­ton. This was the fron­tier.

It was, and still is, a fron­tier of set­tle­ment. The hous­ing comes in waves, lap­ping up and down the con­tours of the val­ley, reflect­ing the styles of the fifties through to the eight­ies. But past the dairy and the still-raw cut of Chur­ton Dri­ve, things take a turn towards the fer­al. Spiked fences, furtive dri­ve­ways, dark loom­ing stands of macro­carpa. A white t‑shirt hangs in the bram­bles, motion­less in the still morn­ing air. A stream emerges from its sub­ter­ranean con­fine­ment, trick­ling dark­ly between broadleaf scrub and wild­ing sycamores. The foot­path nar­rows, com­pressed between white cliff-side rail­ings and a tanalised fence at shin height, a clum­sy goad to keep pedes­tri­ans in their place.

The qua­si-rur­al ambi­ence is inter­rupt­ed by Wing­field Place, the sort of gauche sub­di­vi­sion entrance that seeks to flaunt its spe­cial sta­tus via gra­tu­itous inter­sec­tion land­scap­ing, in this case a lachrymi­form islet of shrubs and boul­ders that does lit­tle more than fur­ther dis­com­fit pedes­tri­ans. But before this, a grav­el track leads down into a strange clear­ing: incon­gru­ous slopes of man­i­cured grass set around a lone and lone­ly kowhai. I hear the sound of water on either side, see the rusty grilles at the entrance to two cul­verts, and deduce that the con­flu­ence is under­ground, per­haps beneath the brute land-bridge of Wing­field Place: there’s some­thing faint­ly unwhole­some about the whole con­cept.

I wan­der towards the east­ern rivulet, and see a net­work of diminu­tive paths beat­en into the under­growth, bear­ing all the signs of child­ish adven­tur­ing among the for­got­ten com­mons. Recall­ing dis­tant child­hood mem­o­ries, it’s hard not to be intrigued, even if they’d lead to noth­ing more a pile of rusty soft drink cans, but peer­ing into the murk I get a sur­prise: dark iron wheels and gears, nes­tled amid the ferns and moth-eat­en kawakawa. Push­ing through the under­growth I come across the ragged stumps of fence posts, a pair of cor­rod­ed rails bridg­ing the shal­low gul­ly, and most sur­pris­ing­ly, a min­i­mal­ist con­crete bunker, its rough aggre­gate suc­cumb­ing to a green fur of algae, moss and ferns. I imag­ine fac­to­ries and lab­o­ra­to­ries, secret mil­i­tary instal­la­tions crum­bling in this for­got­ten val­ley, over­looked and over­grown.

The truth, when I research it lat­er, is more down-to-earth but at least as fas­ci­nat­ing, and caught up in a sur­pris­ing web of his­toric, cul­tur­al and geo­graph­ic con­nec­tions. This is the site of the Drake Home­stead, just one cor­ner of Thomas and Ceres Drake’s farm that once stretched across the hills of Paparan­gi and New­lands, a con­ti­nu­ity now sev­ered by the motor­way. His own name may not be remem­bered here, but his illus­tri­ous ances­tor Sir Fran­cis proved a some­what ten­u­ous inspi­ra­tion for the nam­ing of Grena­da Vil­lage across the high­way. The Caribbean exploits of the Vir­gin Queen’s favourite pirate inspired the devel­op­ers to give those staid and windswept streets such incon­gru­ous­ly trop­i­cal names as “Guade­loupe”,” Trinidad” and “Cura­cao”.

Thomas Drake is said to have been the first to import Rom­ney sheep, and his macro­carpa that still stand creak­ing over the val­ley were the first plant­ed in the Province, their cones then seed­ing the Botan­ic Gar­dens. He found­ed the first brew­ery in Welling­ton, and this 100 acre hold­ing was formed from the first land sub­di­vi­sion in New Zealand. Sheep, macro­carpas, gar­dens, beer and sub­di­vi­sion: a suc­cinct expres­sion of the Pāke­hā mythos.

The Decra­mas­tic tide of the late Pake­ha dream now swirls all around the van­ished home­stead. The only vis­i­ble signs of Drake’s lega­cy are the util­i­tar­i­an relics of agri­cul­tur­al enter­prise, moul­der­ing into the resur­gent bush, and the exot­ic arbo­re­al aspi­ra­tions of the old Eton­ian who plant­ed cypress from Mon­terey and rhodo­den­drons from the Himalayas.

North of Wing­field Place, the Porirua Stream makes anoth­er bid for day­light, and I find my way to a rough stream-side track. The more civic-mind­ed locals have cleared the banks and plant­ed native ripar­i­an species, but for now the effect is of a dry and bar­ren land­scape of pine stumps and recal­ci­trant gorse. Soon the stream retreats back under­ground, and the track deliv­ers me back to the famil­iar exur­ban dross­cape of chain­link fences, ship­ping con­tain­ers, park­ing lots and white con­crete tanks.

A pri­vate access road curves right towards a low ware­house. Street maps show an expanse of grey void, nei­ther city nor park nor coun­try, that non-space that sig­ni­fies “noth­ing to see here”. The aeri­als show an almost endear­ing­ly bucol­ic land­scape of pad­docks and mean­der­ing streams. I’m aware that the curve of the old Porirua Road is tak­ing me fur­ther from the motor­way, and I’d resolved to stick as close as I could to the Road of Nation­al Sig­nif­i­cance that now drones at the far edge of audi­bil­i­ty. Per­haps a spot of cross-coun­try gorse-bash­ing and even some judi­cious tres­pass­ing is called for here, to explore the unseen edge of the high­way?

At first it seems easy, though I’m wary of the bristling CCTV cam­eras that guard the shut­tered ware­house doors. I slip around the side, into a cool piney shade, and look for ways down the bank, but it’s pre­cip­i­tous and guard­ed with barbed wire. At the rear, anoth­er fence thor­ough­ly bars my way, with yet more fences and a rough gul­ly still between me and the motorway’s retain­ing wall. A row of con­tain­ers gath­ers dust and pine nee­dles, and these sym­bols of fast-paced glob­alised com­merce seem almost dis­con­so­late when immo­bilised in such an innocu­ous loca­tion: slow, stag­nant dol­drums in the wake of  inter­na­tion­al capitalism’s dizzy­ing mael­strom. The pre­cur­sors of glob­al­i­sa­tion have left sub­tle traces through­out this val­ley, but the globe-trot­ting Drakes’ adven­tures have now been sys­tem­a­tised and anonymised, stacked and aban­doned.

I head back towards Mid­dle­ton Rd, paus­ing to peer through the pines to the rolling pad­docks beyond. Hors­es trudge and graze list­less­ly along dung-strewn ter­races, penned between motor­way, ware­house, and a dense, fenced-off enclave of homes. These town­hous­es with­out a town have been chris­tened “Mon­terey”, but if this is sup­posed to evoke the Mon­terey Cypress, the Cupress­es macro­carpa so beloved of the Drake fam­i­ly, then their con­spic­u­ous absence with­in the com­plex is beyond irony. The road winds on, into the widen­ing land­scape, the open­ing skies.