Notional Significance: Backbone

[See all Notion­al Sig­nif­i­cance posts]

In mem­o­ry, my feet are weary as I leave the Halfway. My present tense seems strained now, an affec­ta­tion of imme­di­a­cy under­mined by the dis­tance between walk­ing and writ­ing: years since I was here in the flesh; almost as long since my words last trav­elled this road. But I must per­se­vere, car­ry­ing my flag­ging nar­ra­tive beyond the last hous­es of Glen­side and into the nar­row­ing val­ley, let­ting the tem­po­ral dis­lo­ca­tion tie anoth­er knot in the already tan­gled sto­ries of Notion­al Sig­nif­i­cance.

As I pre­pare to walk, a lanky, hir­sute fig­ure strides out of the shim­mer­ing glare: a bogan Bax­ter in fad­ed jeans and black Korn t‑shirt. He crunch­es dogged­ly through the rough met­al that lines the road, eyes squint­ing through me to the wavy asphalt behind my back. I mir­ror his deter­mi­na­tion and move for­ward.

This stretch of val­ley feels like a rur­al inter­lude between the sub­ur­ban tracts of Glen­side and Tawa, and would make as good a mark­er for the “nat­ur­al” bound­ary of Welling­ton as any oth­er. But it’s far from untouched wilder­ness, and soon enough I pass the acknowl­edged sen­tinels of the edge­lands: ken­nels and cat­ter­ies. Lady Jane’s feline logo slinks below firs, while Smart Dogs Dog­gy Day­care guards the hill, and I imag­ine faint mewls and howls above the invis­i­ble motorway’s bassy drone. The only rea­son most sub­ur­ban­ites would stop here would be to drop off their befurred beloveds in some quadruped laager. Human inhab­i­tants of these ragged edges tend to be less domes­ti­cat­ed. Urbanity’s dis­con­tents. Bull­doz­er cow­boys; six­ties burnouts. Apoplec­tic rates rebels with talk­back on speed-dial; train­er-wheel lib­er­tar­i­ans gone not-quite-Galt behind ram­parts of macro­carpa and barbed wire.

Rather than take Mid­dle­ton Road across the stream, I turn right and fol­low the curve of Rowell’s Road up the hill. This slen­der, ragged asphalt rib­bon takes me clos­er to the high­way, and has the fur­ther ben­e­fit of soon reveal­ing oth­er per­spec­tives on this out­ward­ly unre­mark­able val­ley. I stand above the dank por­tal where the rail­way breaks into light for the first time since Ngau­ran­ga, and observe the inter­wo­ven traces of human move­ment. Mid­dle­ton Road fol­lows the Old Porirua Road, which in turn was the orig­i­nal Māori track. To my right, the rum­ble of SH1 fol­lows the for­mer Welling­ton-Man­awatu rail­way. The main trunk line below me was a mod­el of effi­cien­cy when it first blast its way out of the rock in the 1930s to form the Tawa Devi­a­tion and replace the old line. Row­ells Road itself was once a tram­line to aid rail­way con­struc­tion, and on its mar­gins there remain rem­nants of the gar­gan­tu­an rock crush­ing machin­ery that ren­dered chunks of redun­dant hill­side into track bal­last: the earth turned inside out and laid beneath our feet. Beneath it all runs the Porirua Stream, the first of many pow­ers to exploit the earth’s weak­ness­es and force a way north­wards to the sea. We’ve been fol­low­ing ever since.

The road swoops up the hill­side, graz­ing the motor­way, cut­ting through his­to­ries. I pass the spec­u­la­tive ruins of the failed present (bat­tered chas­sis lashed to flatbeds, cater­pil­lars rust­ing atop raw earth bat­ters), then come to a faux-rus­tic sign announc­ing “Ye Olde Bull and Bush” in anachro­nis­tic black let­ter. Its imagery presents colo­nial val­ues with the stark moral­ism of a medi­ae­val dip­tych: on one side, a murky atavis­tic jun­gle of pun­ga and tan­gled foliage; on the oth­er, a trun­cat­ed black stump and a stolid­ly tri­umphant cat­tle­beast stand in a wide emp­ty field. Between the two halves, jagged black lines of barbed wire make the divi­sion and exclu­sion bru­tal­ly explic­it.

Even­tu­al­ly Rowell’s Road peters out to a nar­row strip of grav­el beside the rail­way. I face either a long retrac­ing or an inad­vis­able dash across the tracks into the bram­ble-choked chan­nel of the stream, but I need to explore fur­ther. The road shrinks to a track, then thins to a dusty trail between pine and fen­nel, with glimpses of tin shacks deep in the under­growth, wreathed in ivy. In the end, my way is barred by a gate that means busi­ness, its KEEP OUT sign under­scored by a heavy steel beam.

I briefly con­sid­er tres­pass. These are the grounds of Nott House, the pho­to­geni­cal­ly dilap­i­dat­ed rel­ic that always called to me from the oth­er side of the riv­er, a land­mark that trans­mut­ed a sub­ur­ban com­mute into an imag­ined jour­ney through ghost town West­land. And there are rumours to match: of poi­son, guns and mad­ness. A her­mit was said to stare out from the porch, stark naked, his past murky with mur­der­ous intrigues. Trep­i­da­tion and fas­ci­na­tion vie with­in me. I like to think that when I turn back it is out of respect for the resident’s pri­va­cy, rather than out of cow­ardice.

A year or two after my retreat, that old man died, and the sto­ries were revealed. In the 1950s, he had killed his wife’s lover, gun­ning him down not far from my point of hes­i­ta­tion, and yet he some­how escaped with just a year inside for manslaugh­ter. Years lat­er, from his habit­u­al posi­tion on the veran­dah he watched a heli­copter chase an escaped con­vict, until it tan­gled with the pow­er lines and descend­ed fatal­ly into the stream. His great uncle, a promi­nent ear­ly Welling­ton sur­geon, had his own cause of death record­ed as “a vis­i­ta­tion of God”.

At the time, I am igno­rant of this Grand Guig­nol back­sto­ry. As I back­track in search of an alter­na­tive route, I am instead pre­oc­cu­pied by the more prag­mat­ic machin­ery of death. The sheds around the prop­er­ty were once a fac­to­ry pro­duc­ing Bora­fume, an insec­ti­cide that Cecil Mason had invent­ed just south of here, in a cot­tage near the Halfway. Mason also exper­i­ment­ed with tanal­i­sa­tion, and the sites of his arseni­cal alche­my are scat­tered through the val­ley. A more mys­ti­cal­ly-inclined psy­cho­geo­g­ra­ph­er might trace the fabled rep­u­ta­tion of cer­tain arsenic com­pounds for induc­ing “trances of enlight­en­ment and philo­soph­i­cal ascen­sion”, and bend the time­line back to con­nect to that vis­i­ta­tion of God. I, how­ev­er, will just note a cer­tain mag­ick­al sym­bol­ism in the aspi­ra­tions behind both tanal­i­sa­tion and Bora­fume: that through chem­i­cal process­es, dead tim­ber cut from the liv­ing for­est would achieve a kind of immor­tal­i­ty in the ser­vice of mankind, immune to the depre­da­tions of water­logged soil and rav­en­ous worms. Per­ma­nence through poi­son.

Back in the present, I decide to risk a cross­ing. There’s bare­ly space between the tracks and the thorny river­bank to pass out of reach of the trains, but I gin­ger­ly dash across and resume my down­stream jour­ney.

It may be the tech­ni­cal ille­gal­i­ty of my manoeu­vre, or the mor­bid nature of my thoughts, but for the first time on my jour­ney I have a tan­gi­ble sense of tres­pass. This val­ley is a palimpsest of pro­hi­bi­tions, marked by a land­scape of barbed wire, barred gates and warn­ing signs. Some­where on the left bank was the site of Middleton’s Stock­ade, one of a string of forts built to over­see the colo­nial project and enforce it with mus­kets. Te Rangi­haea­ta had placed a tapu on this route, and his peo­ple tore down bridges and har­ried the road build­ing crews as the real­i­ty of Pāke­hā set­tle­ment and the dubi­ous­ness of the land pur­chas­es became appar­ent. I had read that the tapu applied to the road—that he had declared the trail to be his back­bone, and warned the invaders not to tread on it—but some dis­pute this and say that the tapu was placed on the riv­er itself. I’m not dressed for ford­ing or for scram­bling down steep banks, let alone for tram­pling on sacred ver­te­brae, and I begin to won­der whether I will ever find a way across the stream and back to Mid­dle­ton Road.

When I final­ly spy a cross­ing, it is at a place where the riv­er seems most des­e­crat­ed. Con­crete cubes tum­ble down the bank into the riverbed, and a brutish steel cage forms a crude flood pro­tec­tion device. I pick my way across, stone by stone, and clam­ber up the bank to the road. From here, it’s a dull yet haz­ardous jour­ney along a busy coun­try road with lit­tle or no foot­path, yet my eyes still dart around in search of con­nec­tions. The foun­da­tions of World War II tank traps are buried at the road­side, so every hunk of con­crete is poten­tial her­itage. Con­trap­tions of rail­way iron and rough con­crete were to be rolled across the road in the event of ene­my inva­sion, and I remem­ber that Te Rangihaeata’s men felled trees across the old trail to stop the Euro­pean invaders from pass­ing. Times change, but the land endures, and so do the means of its defence.

Now, as the road curves clos­er to the motor­way, I can hear its famil­iar dirge and see its green and white signs through gaps in the macro­carpa screen. The val­ley begins to open up, but a vast unnat­ur­al bank rears up against the north­east sky­line. I am com­ing to a cross­roads.