Notional Significance: Flat

[See all Notion­al Sig­nif­i­cance posts]

I set off along Tay­lor Ter­race, and into the slow, steady heart of the sub­urbs. So far my path has tra­versed urban, edge­lands and rur­al land­scapes, with occa­sion­al tan­gen­tial encoun­ters across suburbia’s ragged edges. But here I am engulfed, flanked on both sides, strid­ing out its loose domes­tic rhythms: hip, hip, gable, hip. The motor­way is just a quarter-acre’s depth from my right foot, but its drone is near­ly drowned by the harsh­er buzz of mow­ers and late-sum­mer cicadas, its pun­gent monox­ide lost among the grass clip­pings. The sud­den lim­bic snap back to school­ground mem­o­ries.

The road ris­es and falls like a deep ocean swell, occa­sion­al breaks in the hedges reveal­ing the flat val­ley to my left. Flat­ness is so much its defin­ing fea­ture that until the 1950s it was offi­cial­ly known as “Tawa Flat”. It’s the home­ly flat­ness of an egal­i­tar­i­an ide­al, a fad­ing dream in a post-Roger­nomics coun­try, but still leg­i­ble in the mod­esty of these homes—scaled to human limbs and aspi­ra­tions, unlike the bulked-up Hardie’s cas­tles on the oth­er side of the high­way. The hard-won flat line of a life with­out sur­pris­es, when fam­i­lies strug­gled towards com­fort rather than poly­styrene columns. Not that dreams are absent: they just tend towards the harm­less­ly whim­si­cal (an angler’s idyll air­brushed onto the side of a car­a­van; a garage door wall­pa­pered in imi­ta­tion brick; a clapped-out Caprice restored to a lov­ing sheen on the road­side verge). It’s the flat­ness of Lynn of Tawa’s vow­els, a car­i­ca­ture (none-too-lov­ing­ly scratched with fake nails on a worn-out black­board) of low­er-mid­dle class mid­dle New Zealand. And so Tawa became a metonym for post-war suburbia—simultaneously a cru­el clas­sist joke and a Boomer ori­gin myth—and staked a claim to nation­al sig­nif­i­cance of Pavlo­van emi­nence.

The mouth of the cul-de-sac even­tu­al­ly dis­gorges me at a round­about, and I turn up Tawa Ter­race, fol­low­ing the high­way as close­ly as I can. A wood­ed emi­nence ris­es above the flat­ness: one half of a hill that was bisect­ed by the motor­way. I drift into Court Road, and the route turns wild once again, bend­ing across a for­mer water­course and up the hill­side. A strange, aloof house, its roof­s­cape a col­li­sion of acute angles, sits sen­tinel upon the peak. The road twists and nar­rows, peters out into a track. The crunch of grav­el. The snap of broom and the crushed licorice scent of fen­nel. The sun’s insis­tent pres­sure on my chest, resist­ing my pas­sage.

I con­cede a pause. From here, I can look out across most of Tawa. What the 1897 Cyclo­pe­dia described as “a pic­turesque arca­di­an set­tle­ment” is now a soft­ly rum­pled quilt of roofs and green­ery, fray­ing at the edges is it folds into the forests beyond. Its cen­tre, if indeed it can be said to have a cen­tre (the big-box ban­dits hav­ing exert­ed their cen­trifu­gal forces), is marked by a super­mar­ket, the world’s most timid attempt at a Bru­tal­ist office block, and of course church­es. It’s a Welling­ton tru­ism that Tawa has more church­es than any oth­er sub­urb, but I’ve yet to see any sta­tis­ti­cal proof, and cen­sus data sug­gests that the pop­u­lace is no more devout than in oth­er out­er sub­urbs. What it does have is some strik­ing white mod­ernist steeples, includ­ing the intri­cate geo­met­ric lat­tice of Our Lady of Fati­ma. Tawa’s geom­e­try, sacred and pro­fane: spires, obelisks, round­abouts, culs-de-sac.

Court Road becomes a road again, then at the next junc­tion I turn right and fol­low Cecil Road as it grazes the motor­way before deposit­ing me at the vast green flat­ness of Tawa Col­lege. There are signs: pro­hi­bi­tions on smok­ing, golf and dogs (and pre­sum­ably any com­bi­na­tion there­of), and the school’s heraldic com­mand­ment to “Do Just­ly”. This mild Bib­li­cal encour­age­ment might not have rubbed off on all of the com­mu­ni­ty, or at least not upon whoever’s jagged hand scratched FUCK YOU across the coat of arms.

I trudge across the brown­ing lawns, and thread my way between desert­ed class­rooms to find a tun­nel. Inside, it’s dingy but bliss­ful­ly cool, and I linger despite the ran­cid air. Traces of graf­fi­ti, and graffiti’s era­sure, grey on grey. Dead leaves and crushed cans. The ceil­ing rum­bling like an invert­ed earth­quake. The weight of nation­al sig­nif­i­cance above my head. White light glar­ing from the far side.

When I emerge, it is onto yet anoth­er flat off-green ter­race: the oth­er half of Tawa College’s grounds, sev­ered by the motorway’s razor slice. The carriageway’s so close I can taste it. Cars ham­mer along this unim­ped­ed straight, shim­mer­ing in the asphalt haze. I have to weave through the streets of Greenacres (Tawa’s for­got­ten coun­try cousin), tak­ing Allen and Mahoe Streets until I hit Mahoe Park, and from here I can edge my way along a nar­row strip between hous­es and hard shoul­der.

From a hillock I can look north towards the pro­posed Trans­mis­sion Gul­ly turnoff. I briefly con­sid­ered fol­low­ing the pro­posed Road of Nation­al Sig­nif­i­cance from here, but my appetite for tres­pass is not what it was. I strug­gle to even imag­ine the pres­ence of a new road here…no, that’s not quite cor­rect. I can visu­alise pres­ence; it’s absence that defeats me: the van­ished trees, the sliced-off hill­sides. And NZTA’s plans are a shift­ing, slith­er­ing tan­gle of absences, quan­tum voids of neg­a­tive poten­tial­i­ty that twist their vir­tu­al noth­ing­ness through sol­id rock as engi­neers recal­cu­late their capac­i­ty for era­sure.

In the tan­gi­ble world, I scram­ble down a slope and emerge beside the Collins Ave under­pass. Back to the rur­al edge. I can’t help smil­ing at the jux­ta­po­si­tion of the street name oppo­site me—Little Collins Street—with the spray-paint­ed sign beneath it: “HORSE POO!”. This is as far as one can get from the world of Mel­bourne bou­tiques.

I pass through the under­pass, with its quaint­ly cob­bled banks, and instead of turn­ing imme­di­ate­ly right and fol­low­ing the high­way through Arthur Car­man Park (“Car­man” seems an apt name for these neigh­bour­hoods), I detour a cou­ple of blocks to the Lin­den shops. This is large­ly a sur­vival mechanism—I haven’t eat­en or had a cold drink since John­sonville, which seems an age ago—but Lin­den holds its own charms and sto­ries. Dairies either side of the lev­el cross­ing, at least one good fish and chips shop, and a shop spe­cial­is­ing in South African meats. An exem­plar of 1970s late Mod­ernist sub­ur­ban retail archi­tec­ture: rak­ish­ly angled shop win­dows divid­ed by walls of bright geo­met­ric tiles and imi­ta­tion peb­ble.

But it’s all suf­fused with a deep sense of absence, of thwart­ed ambi­tion, of sub­ur­ban aspi­ra­tions left to gath­er dust as the high­way rolls past into a future that has no need for them. The signs are there—“Regal Man­u­fac­tur­ers”, “Divine Wed­ding & Bridal”—cracked win­dows into emp­ty spaces. A sign reas­sures me “YOU ARE/HERE”, but the map has fad­ed into an acci­den­tal Male­vich: an abstract com­po­si­tion of ochre lines, green poly­gons, and a blue squig­gle that wan­ders aim­less­ly across the for­get­ful grey field. A sub­urb that once dreamed of being Regal and Divine (Lynn of Tawa in a tiara from Farm­ers?) now knows firm­ly that it is here, but “here” has lost all shape and con­text.