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.