Notional Significance: Asylum

[See all Notion­al Sig­nif­i­cance posts]

After my detour, I head back to the motorway’s edge. My route takes me along Mexted Terrace—a name that is engraved across Tawa’s skin, and with its twin asso­ci­a­tions of car deal­er­ships and rug­by it encom­pass­es two dimen­sions of the sub­ur­ban mythos. On the cor­ner of Treme­wan Street, with the high­way traf­fic in sight, is the home of the Tawa Art & Craft Soci­ety. It is not a grand edi­fice. The low-gabled house sits among shape­less lawns, with only a bat­tered veran­dah and lam­i­nat­ed Com­ic Sans sig­nage to dis­tin­guish it from its domes­tic sur­round­ings. Art knows its place.

The nature of domes­tic­i­ty changes as I walk along Treme­wan Street into a rare (for Welling­ton City) tract of state hous­ing. These are nei­ther detached house­holds (the Anglo­form mock-vil­lagery of famil­iar famil­ial state hous­es) nor bold utopi­an struc­tures hero­ical­ly forg­ing com­mu­ni­ties in the sky, but awk­ward, self-deny­ing half-way hous­es, lost between the two visions. Once you stretch out a weath­er­board box to these dimen­sions, giv­ing it a hipped roof no longer con­notes cosi­ness; it speaks of the bar­racks and the dorm, of pater­nal­ism and the loss of agency. They stand to atten­tion around a sunken carpark, back­ing on to scrub, arm­co, and the relent­less motor­way. And behind that, the dark plan­ta­tions bide their time, await­ing their trans­for­ma­tion into the asphalt knot of the new Kenepe­ru Inter­change.

The street descends, to the con­stant accom­pa­ni­ment of dron­ing traf­fic. As the road curves away to the left, it reveals a small park, and I cut across the patchy grass. A group of chil­dren watch­es me and my cam­era war­i­ly from the edge of a play­ground. One of them gives me a quick upwards nod. “Sup, Grandad?”

Silent­ly, I nod back, while walk­ing down the hill towards the rail­way. From here, I glimpse a wide, ele­vat­ed plateau across the val­ley: the for­mer Porirua Lunatic Asy­lum. Kenepu­ru Hos­pi­tal still func­tions here, a timid sub-Bru­tal­ist clus­ter set amid placid lawns, but the rest of the grounds resem­ble a post-apoc­a­lyp­tic autonomous zone; a land apart; a land of for­get­ting and renew­al, of decay and rein­ven­tion, of exploita­tion and resis­tance. The men­tal hos­pi­tal teemed with sto­ries, sto­ries that haunt me but that I shy away from telling. They are too raw; too con­test­ed; too entan­gled. Not my sto­ries.

The park turns ragged where it backs onto Kenepe­ru sta­tion. A lone­ly, lop­sided plat­form. An orphan. Threat­ened with aban­don­ment because it served the abandoned—state house kids, desul­to­ry indus­try, a hos­pi­tal that many would rather for­get. I climb the long ramp of the rick­ety over­bridge, and descend towards a grav­el track squeezed between the tracks and the Porirua Stream. The paths con­verge as Tawa Flat is com­pressed between the hills and ter­races. The val­ley that began with a prison ends with an asy­lum. Soon the motor­way is again an audi­ble pres­ence to my right.

On the oth­er bank, indus­try and amuse­ment cohab­it among the con­crete. Hulks of clas­sic cars await restora­tion; weeds sprout defi­ant­ly from the cracks in a des­o­late go-kart cir­cuit. Bal­lard in micro­cosm. Oth­ers have found their own enter­tain­ment, as the bright­ly-bombed tilt-slab attests. Swirls, skulls, sig­na­tures. The lan­guage of the unheard.

Some­where near here, there will be a bridge, span­ning stream and rail­way to con­nect Kenepu­ru Dri­ve to the new inter­change. Telling­ly, it will duck beneath the exist­ing high­way to meet the Trans­mis­sion Gul­ly route, dodg­ing any con­tact with the road that’s cur­rent­ly State High­way 1. The motor­way that I’ve stalked for most of my jour­ney will no longer be nation­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant: it will be mere­ly a local com­muter route for a string of coastal towns and sub­urbs. I almost feel sor­ry for it.

I have now offi­cial­ly walked out of Welling­ton. At least, the Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Author­i­ty of Welling­ton City ends here, as I step into Porirua City. This could be a nat­ur­al place to end the trail of Notion­al Sig­nif­i­cance, and my weary bones and even wea­ri­er prose would wel­come that. But the wider Welling­ton region holds many more sto­ries, along both the exist­ing and pro­posed routes, and I’m com­mit­ted to mak­ing the jour­ney. Walk on.

Above the bluff on my left, I catch glimpses of Porirua ceme­tery, and I think of Meg Campbell’s lines: “From the win­dow I see a hedge/between hos­pi­tal grounds and cemetery./A fall­en jam-jar spills its dead/gladioli on a grave.” Once more, I’m tempt­ed to diva­gate through the extra­or­di­nary psy­cho­geog­ra­phy of that world with­in a world, but I could not do jus­tice to its ter­rors and con­tra­dic­tions. A sanc­tu­ary for some; a prison for oth­ers. Kathy Dudding’s glacial, heart­break­ing doc­u­men­tary Asy­lum Pieces says more than I ever could or should.

The stream; the track; the rail­way; the high­way: now all in align­ment, run­ning due north, aspir­ing towards the sun and the allure of dis­tance. Sure­ly it’s coin­ci­dence that they all point to the ghost­ly iron trace of Titahi Bay trans­mit­ter? The country’s sec­ond tallest struc­ture, beam­ing out the voice of the nation, looms at the apex of these paths like an obelisk on a ley line. I feel an inex­orable pres­sure northwards…or that might just be the bare­ly tan­gi­ble pull of grav­i­ty, the same sub­tle slope that sends the stream tum­bling over its last few weirs towards the sea.

On my oth­er flank, the motor­way traf­fic seems cap­tive to the same desire. The nar­ra­tive of the road is so often the myth of free­dom, but the relent­less, rest­less tor­rent reminds me of a tread­mill. A motor­way is nev­er a place to be: it is a means to an end, and the end is “else­where”. I briefly con­sid­er com­par­ing the dri­vers to vol­un­tary inmates, will­ing­ly sub­ju­gat­ing them­selves to the mad­ness of a sys­tem that wor­ships motion and den­i­grates place, but then I realise the shal­low glib­ness of that com­par­i­son. The need for escape—even for move­ment for its own sake—cannot be so eas­i­ly dis­missed.

I can only leave the last words to Meg Camp­bell, from her poem Soli­tary Con­fine­ment: “A bird sang in the hos­pi­tal garden/and out­side the unbreakable/glass win­dow the flow­ers grew/without super­vi­sion, and the sun/lifted into the sky of its own voli­tion.”