Notional Significance: Downstream

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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.