Notional Significance: Backbone

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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.