Notional Significance: Lagoons

[Alf’s back after a long absence! You can catch up on his pre­vi­ous post in this series, or read all Notion­al Sig­ni­fic­ance posts.]

The path skirts the six-lane high­way, com­pressed between traffic and hill­side, passing beneath stol­id, gal­van­ised totems that awaken onrush­ing com­muters to an immin­ent decision. Soon the curve of the car­riage­way straight­ens, but the scrubby bank on my right con­tin­ues to bend away, tra­cing the former shoreline, and a cap­tured land­scape reveals itself. Okowai—a bowl of water—a pres­ci­ent name for what became an acci­dent­al lagoon, cut off from the har­bour by the human aver­sion to indir­ect­ness.

The reshap­ing began with the rail­way in the late Fifties, a slender curve draped lightly across the tips of the head­lands. Then came the motor­way, which bulked out into a hefty swathe of tar­mac and berm, usurp­ing the fractal fili­gree of the estu­ar­ine edge. From the elev­ated, time-dilated per­spect­ive of the motor­way, the res­ult­ing lagoon seems little more than a ditch, an insig­ni­fic­ant patch of damp­ness at the foot of an undis­tin­guished hill­side. But from down here, it’s the road that’s the anom­aly, revealed as the cause­way it is.

I fancy that Bal­lard would have felt at home here: like Shep­per­ton, this is an ambi­val­ent land­scape delin­eated by severed bod­ies of water; by the rail­ways that brought the hin­ter­land into the city’s hungry grasp; by the obsess­ive motion of motor­ways and the aggress­ive nor­mal­ity of domest­ic­a­tion. Flood-mead­ows, oxbows. Dams and cul­verts. An inter(tidal)zone zone in the dis­solv­ing bound­ary between water­logged land and silt-laden water, between nature and arti­fice, between nos­tal­gia and impa­tient pro­gress. A squad­ron of ducks crash­lands in a sed­i­ment trap, then circles its raw peri­met­er, eyes as opaque and yel­low as the shiv­er­ing water. Bal­lar­d­i­an meets mal­lar­d­i­an.

On the land­ward side, a gang of bull­dozers lurks next to their handi­work: a ragged zig­gur­at of ochre earth that no longer resembles a hill­side, but is still far from the sub­urb that it’s destined to become. Above this, the Mag­rit­tean loneli­ness of street­lamps without streets, stand­ing around on the ridgeline with heads bowed: some clustered togeth­er as if kvetch­ing at the bit­ter weath­er, oth­ers mooch­ing off on their own. Someone called a meet­ing but they did­n’t get the memo.

Since I began my jour­ney, this is my closest encounter with sprawl’s slow storm­front. For years, this land was lumbered with the name “Aotea Block”, where the mana of Turi’s great waka was brought back to (col­on­ised) earth with the clunky, cadas­tral “Block”. Now that the embryon­ic sub­ur­bia is ready for sale, the developers have pared that back to the more eupho­ni­ous (and mar­ket­able) “Aotea”.

Not that there’s any­thing remotely hab­it­able about this hill­side yet. Nick Papadi­mitri­ou referred to the sub­urbs as “the moment­ary dream of a mush­room god”, but as res­on­ant as that image might be, it seems too gently organ­ic for the viol­ent trans­form­a­tion that pre­cedes the birth of a sub­urb. I’d like to ima­gine houses sprout­ing in slow motion from rich loam, the vis­ible fruition of stealthy thread­like net­works, but what I see is a mer­ci­less flay­ing of the land; ampu­ta­tion of hill­tops; suf­foc­a­tion of val­leys. Shattered trunks and gouged trenches. Blas­ted earth.

From bey­ond the barbed wire and warn­ing signs (“THIS IS A MULTIPLE/HAZARD AREA”) comes the nas­al snarl of dirt­bikes. No longer farm­land, not yet neigh­bour­hood, the land-in-limbo becomes an oppor­tun­ity for tres­pass and adven­ture (of a rather more hec­tic vari­ety than my plod­ding pil­grim­age and even slower writ­ing). By the time I write this up, the dig­gers will have returned, repla­cing the rut­ted trails with broad, stand­ards-com­pli­ant streets, ready to dream the orderly dreams of a dorm­it­ory sub­urb.

As the rough path meets Okowai Rd, a semi­ot­ic con­tra­dic­tion catches my eye. A “NO ENTRY/One Way Road” sign painted in folksy let­ters on a cheer­ful blue back­ground, next to a carved wooden pineapple—a fruit that once sym­bol­ised hos­pit­al­ity and gen­er­os­ity, due to its pre­cious rar­ity in Europe. I turn, and walk against the grain (which could describe my whole walk­ing pro­ject), past the moss-softened fruit and into the shady forest bey­ond.

The pine trunks are tall and bare, sway­ing and groan­ing in the insist­ent south­erly. Their upper reaches are tightly strung with cables, a tangled net­work recall­ing the over­head wires of the nearby main trunk line. These bind togeth­er an elev­ated archipelago of crude plat­forms, like children’s tree­houses blown up to the scale of a forest civil­isa­tion on an arboreal moon.

A sign informs me that this is no ordin­ary forest, but “Adren­al­in Forest”: a privat­ised adven­ture play­ground where adults pay to face down their fear of grav­ity. On their logo, an ape swings non­chal­antly from a wire. An invit­a­tion to atav­ism, tempt­ing us to shed our civ­il­ised lay­ers and revert to our prim­al selves. Down by the motor­way, Ballard’s ghost watches the incom­ing tide with a wry smile.

But com­pared to the kids on their trail­bikes, carving up trails of two-stroke trans­gres­sion through the gorse and mud, this is a grimly regi­men­ted form of “adven­ture”. The goal is team­build­ing, a sylvan con­fid­ence course to pre­pare you for the con­fid­ence trick of cor­por­ate climb­ing. It reduces adven­ture to mere adren­al­in: the dir­ect injec­tion of hor­mon­al arous­al. I prefer to think that adven­ture is about dis­cov­ery, about not know­ing what might emerge around the next corner, or what will emerge with­in you dur­ing the jour­ney.

I pick my way through pine and resur­gent bush. Here and there I stumble across rem­nants of farm infra­struc­ture, sub­sid­ing into lichen and ivy. A gal­van­ised out­build­ing has been covered with a sur­pris­ingly neat array of tags, their styl­ised mul­ti­col­oured scrawls fol­low­ing the hori­zont­al cor­rug­a­tions like hiero­glyphs recount­ing sol­emn dyn­ast­ic busi­ness. Many of the tags are repeated over and over—I think I can make out RAZOR, ABC, KEEN—and now all I can think of is lines on a black­board, as if this were the res­ult of a deten­tion class for tag­gers.

As I crest the top of the knoll, the under­growth thins out. There are more hand­writ­ten let­ters, but this time sig­nalling more respect­able pas­times: “ATTIC ARTISTS/CAMERA CLUB/FIBRECRAFTS//POTTERY”. Mor­tar­less kilns and dense mats of pine needles give way to rock walls, flower beds and drive­ways, and then the stately form of Gear Homestead.

James Gear was a failed pro­spect­or but a very suc­cess­ful butcher. After attempt­ing to carve up Otago rock in search of gold, he found there was more money in his old trade of carving up anim­als, and at his peak his fleshy empire stretched from Te Horo to Karori. He had a butchery shop on Lamb­ton Quay, and his rather less salu­bri­ous meat­works (includ­ing the offal pits on his eponym­ous island) dom­in­ated the eco­nom­ic and olfact­ory land­scape of Petone for gen­er­a­tions. As one of the first export­ers of refri­ger­ated meat, his leg­acy could truly be said to be of nation­al sig­ni­fic­ance. Now his Itali­anate homestead, once the height of good taste, is bet­ter known in pop­u­lar cul­ture for explod­ing sheep and ali­ens with a (bad) taste for brains.

He aged, faltered, and grew mis­an­throp­ic. Seek­ing silence and solace, he built a retreat and con­nec­ted it to the house with an elab­or­ate bridge, though only his ser­vants were per­mit­ted across it to feed and care for him. Alone in this annex, he cut him­self off from his fam­ily and the world, as the lagoons have since become severed from their har­bour. No man is a (Gear) island, but wealth can buy you pen­in­su­lar solitude.

The homestead’s orderly grounds perch on a steep bluff right above the motor­way. I look down across sev­en lanes, the rail­way and the agit­ated har­bour, but there’s no way down towards the high­way. Instead, I fol­low the curving drive­way to the main entrance. Across the road, Aotea College’s logo is a pātaka: like Gear’s annex, a small house kept elev­ated and safe from the world’s depred­a­tions. Steep banks and brick walls keep the Col­lege itself aloof from the street, while next door, blank rendered ram­parts form a sym­bol­ic gate­way to the nas­cent sub­di­vi­sion.

Des­pite these emblems of safety, seclu­sion and order, the land­scape is still raw with trans­ition. Veins of decay wind through the rolling topo­graphy. Gul­lies clogged with sub­urb­an detrit­us, bottles, tyres and trol­leys fad­ing into a uni­form rust-brown as the pine needles build up in deep drifts. Aban­doned pad­docks claimed by gorse and rank grass. Mag­pies on the over­grown verges, hop­ping indig­nantly as they’re ruffled by imper­tin­ent gusts.

From here, the closest walk­able path to State High­way 1 takes me through the grounds of Aotea Lagoon, anoth­er aquat­ic by-product of the motorway’s expan­sion. On a summer’s day this would be a sub­urb­an oas­is, but in this bit­ter grey­ness the cheer­ful oddit­ies of its design take on strange sig­ni­fic­ance. While I won’t be in for any big sur­prises (a mourn­ful sign advises “Teddy Bears Pic­nic Can­celled”), a ded­ic­ated earth-magic psy­cho­geo­graph­er could write a whole book about its twis­ted geo­met­ries and sym­bol­ism.

I begin to cir­cum­nav­ig­ate the lagoon, passing Guy Ngan’s crys­tal­line spike. Forged in gleam­ing steel by Chubb Lock and Safe, it resembles a gnomon in search of a sun­di­al. Indeed, it pre­vi­ously stood at the centre of the wheel-shaped rose garden, but was removed for unknown reas­ons and now stands alone, its rest­less angu­lar ener­gies forever dis­sip­ated. I want to invest­ig­ate fur­ther, but a sud­den shower drives me in search of shel­ter. I duck into the nearby fern­ery, and rest amid its deep green shade while I con­sider my next move.