Notional Significance: Crossroads

[See all Notion­al Sig­nif­i­cance posts]

Anoth­er bend; anoth­er end­ing. I cross into Tawa, which was a sep­a­rate bor­ough until 1989, when in the words of a for­mer May­or it was “just tacked on” to Welling­ton. Topo­graph­i­cal­ly, and per­haps in sen­ti­ment, it still leans more towards Porirua than to Lambton Har­bour. But as the old track changes names from Mid­dle­ton Road (with the mil­i­taris­tic bag­gage of its epony­mous stock­ade) to the bucol­ic cadence of Wil­low­bank Road, on paper I remain in Welling­ton City.

Not exact­ly sub­ur­bia. Mill­hous­es and gorse; rick­ety bridges; high ten­sion lines. Com­pounds for the con­tain­ment of dogs and way­ward women. And beside me all the time, that unwhole­some botch of raw earth still rear­ing up across the riv­er. Flax­en mit­i­ga­tion scrab­bles across the hard-scraped clay, but the razored hori­zon evinces unspeak­able crimes against the land­scape. It’s a bat­tered slope, in every sense; a shal­low grave as seen by an ant; a bar­row where the entombed is the earth itself.

At the cross­roads, a top­i­aried wel­come. The let­ters T A W A bloom forth in trimmed flo­ra, but this geo­graph­i­cal reminder is redun­dant beside the trun­cat­ed conif­er­ous cone known as the Buck­et Tree, which ranks just below Dress­mart in the pan­theon of Tawa sig­ni­fiers. These sym­bols of fuss­i­ly-tend­ed domes­tic­i­ty look almost appeal­ing in the weary heat of late sum­mer, but my task is to shad­ow the high­way, so I head east across the riv­er.

I nego­ti­ate round­abouts, look­ing for the track that will take me down to the stream and then on to my planned route. But the mon­strous earth­works exert a per­verse pull, and I drift across the road and up a stub of a track towards the top of the man­u­fac­tured mesa. I pass between con­crete cubes and enter a for­got­ten world that goes by the name of Taka­pu Island.

While that might con­jure images of a lone­ly isle lapped by calm waters, its insu­lar­i­ty is a symp­tom of the more hec­tic cur­rents of mod­ern life. It is a teardrop of land, wrenched from its con­text by motor­ways, inter­changes and rail­ways. Flat­tened and pum­melled by years of earth­works (of vary­ing degrees of legal­i­ty), this desert(ed) island resem­bles one of those “lost world” table­lands that pre­serves fabled ecosys­tems. But there are no car­niv­o­rous plants or uni­corn skulls to be found here, just the famil­iar edge­lands species: pylons, gas pipes, Arm­co and grav­el. Reeds and cracked clay delin­eate the sites of dried-up ponds; some have the uncan­ny lin­ear­i­ty of ley lines. Thou­sands of pinecones lie strewn through the resur­gent gorse­fields, evi­dence of some for­got­ten arbo­re­al atroc­i­ty. Infant gorse crunch­es men­ac­ing­ly under­foot, and I muse on the role of gorse as the landown­er’s bio­log­i­cal weapon against squat­ters and ram­blers: there’s no right to roam in a coun­try where any aban­doned land rapid­ly trans­forms into an impen­e­tra­ble mass of thorns.

The pen might be might­i­er than the sword, but the bull­doz­er is might­i­er than my key­board. Since my excur­sion the aban­don­ment has end­ed, and the end game for this defeat­ed land is in sight. A super­mar­ket has sprung from the gorse, its red-slashed rough­cast look­ing less invit­ing than the curi­ous­ly domes­tic form of Aro­ha­ta prison across the val­ley. The rest of the island awaits its fate: an asphalt tomb with tilt-slab head­stones.

I make a desul­to­ry cir­cum­nav­i­ga­tion of the island, paus­ing to savour the roar­ing prox­im­i­ty of the motor­way that defines its east­ern shore. Beyond, a tar­mac knot of ramps and under­pass­es, the lazy curves of the inter­change defined by the physics of decel­er­a­tion. Beyond that, Grena­da North, with its boxy con­crete ram­parts; then the long ridge­line of Horoki­wi shim­mer­ing in the burnt blue heat. A bill­board reads “Now in CBD”, and I rather wish I was.

I traipse back down the access road, then east again towards the inter­change. Oppo­site a caged tan­gle of pipes, I fol­low a rough track down to the val­ley. In the rel­a­tive cool, anoth­er inter­sec­tion: the con­flu­ence of the Taka­pu and Kenepu­ru streams. This also marks the point where the Koroko­ro-Porirua track met the Old Porirua Road; a cross­roads for hun­dreds of years. Now it is qui­et and still, the din of today’s cross­roads lost in the leafi­ness over­head.

The place exudes an ancient, long-set­tled feel­ing, a very un-Welling­ton sense of deep and calm belong­ing, rather than the hard-won tenac­i­ty of cling­ing to a hill­side in a gale. A benev­o­lent genius loci over­looks this Arca­di­an vale: home­ly, and yet for that very rea­son unhome­ly to the gust-accus­tomed. Wil­low­bank Reserve, with its soft lawns and weep­ing eponyms, is a rem­nant of the Bosco­bel orchard, and near­ly 150 years lat­er its bosk­i­ness remains in the form of rare apple cul­ti­vars.

But even that was pre­ced­ed by Māori cul­ti­va­tion grounds. The con­flu­ence of streams became a con­flu­ence of paths and then a place to grow crops; today, the con­flu­ence of motorised paths still brings peo­ple to this cross­roads to seek food—though now their pata­ka is a con­crete box and their kete have four wheels. Like the mul­ti­ple trunks of the Buck­et Tree that some say have now fused into a “nat­ur­al graft”, phys­i­cal, cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic imper­a­tives coa­lesce into a liv­ing, deeply root­ed enti­ty that we call “place”. It’s just that now, we trim it into unnat­ur­al shapes.

A track leads through the woods and up the hill. It opens onto a dri­ve­way, which opens onto the bul­bous cul of a dis­tend­ed sac: Tay­lor Ter­race. I am now in Tawa prop­er. The sub­urbs.