Notional Significance: Yellow Earth

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Wind-hur­ried rain­drops pelt against the Shade­house roof, which provides but mea­gre shel­ter as I wait out the passing shower. Cold droplets des­cend through green air into the expect­ant foliage, main­tain­ing a humid atmo­sphere to feed a pteridomaniac’s wet dream. In a fern-fevered nation this is an orgy of pat­ri­ot­ic sym­bols, writh­ing lushly in secluded still­ness. The build­ing itself is a tri­umph of Mitre Ten mod­ern­ism, its fol­ded roof forms evok­ing both futur­ist geo­met­ries and the domest­ic calm of wharenui and garden sheds. As the rain abates I leave the Shade­house, not­ing the way that its crisp archi­tec­ture is blurred by tendrils, by creep­ers, by fronds escap­ing the loose cage of mossy slats. Inside and out­side inter­sect; nature and arti­fice inter­twine.

Out­side, arti­fice dom­in­ates. As soon as this shal­low bay had been cut off from the har­bour, the Min­istry of Works wanted it entirely filled with spoil from nearby earth­works. But the Har­bour Author­ity dis­sen­ted, wor­ried that the sub­urbs were being severed from the water, and called for “an aquat­ic recre­ation reserve”. And thus it has become a quaint par­ody of coastal land­forms; a muni­cip­al theme park; an unas­sum­ing, ano­dyne uto­pia.

The bulk forms of this nes­ted, self-sim­il­ar land­scape (ponds with­in islands with­in lagoons with­in an island) were scraped into place by the machines of state. The details that rendered it a micro­cosm of sub­urb­an nor­mal­ity were then craf­ted by col­lab­or­a­tions between Mul­doon­ist make-work schemes and the earn­est, civic-minded pater­nal­ism of the ser­vice clubs: Lions, Jaycees, Rotari­ans. The latter’s six-spoked wheel was stamped into the earth in the form of a rose garden, while the con­stant thrum of rub­ber on asphalt from just over the berm reminds us that the entire lagoon and park are products of a soci­ety that wor­ships wheels.

More wheels crank rust­ily over­head. An ersatz wind­mill strikes an omin­ous Wick­er Man sil­hou­ette against the mono­chrome sky, its empty sails churn­ing away des­pite the wind, not because of it. As with the aban­doned jet­ties built over the drains that fill the lagoon with storm­wa­ter and tox­ic silt, this is whimsy as a mask for infra­struc­ture. Beneath its weathered shingles, cul­verts and cov­ert valves con­trol the tid­al flow between the cap­tive inlet and the true har­bour.

I skirt the con­crete bank, fol­low­ing the tracks of a mini­ature rail­way. Anoth­er exer­cise in nos­tal­gia; in lit­er­al and semi­ot­ic recyc­ling. The weather­board tick­et office is sign­posted “Pip­itea Sta­tion”, a name likely taken from the ori­gin­al cent­ral Wel­ling­ton sta­tion. The engine (when it emerges for weekly joyrides) bears the liv­ery of a long-defunct Wel­ling­ton-to-Napi­er ser­vice. The tracks them­selves were salvaged from a failed coal mine.

The real rail­way drew the first line that delin­eated this arti­fi­cial land­scape, but as a mode it’s now dimin­ished, reduced to an infant’s toy while the big boys play with their Hot Wheels on the motor­way next door. A tail-chas­ing loop, con­nect­ing nowhere to nowhere, in an age of driv­en lin­ear­ity. A back­wa­ter. A slow, brack­ish eddy in the wake of a sur­ging cur­rent.

Just a few metres past the sta­tion, the tracks dis­ap­pear into a con­struc­ted hill­side, their path cut off by stone walls and a bolted steel door. A tun­nel for the sake of tun­nel, exist­ing solely to give its week­end pas­sen­gers the brief chthon­ic fris­son of slid­ing into the earth’s embrace.

Flat, shad­ow­less light. Incess­ant drone of the unseen motor­way. I don’t know what induced it, but even years later, I can feel the sud­den wave of dis­or­i­ent­a­tion that over­took me in that eer­ily banal land­scape. My sense of scale aban­doned me, and I felt that I was no longer look­ing at a real (if mini­ature) rail­way, but that I’d been shrunken to the scale of a mod­el. I feared that if I dared look closely at the shrub­bery, it would reveal itself as mon­strous scraps of dried lichen. I looked around for fel­low humans to con­vince myself that they (and I) weren’t plastic figures—marooned pas­sen­gers and stat­ic sta­tion­mas­ters, painted and placed by some lonely old man in a musty base­ment. But I was alone.

A bird screeched, and broke the spell. Clouds par­ted, and a sliv­er of light skipped across the silt-laden water. Nev­er­the­less, as I hur­ried past duck­ponds and deser­ted play­grounds towards the north­ern exit, I couldn’t escape the sense of being observed. Over­seen.

Across the road, the Police Col­lege dom­in­ates the tawny hill­side. It dates from the era when Bru­tal­ism was los­ing its bush-hammered bravado, when pub­lic archi­tects attemp­ted to domest­ic­ate the rec­ti­lin­ear rigours of Mod­ern­ism with toytown hips and gables. The res­ult some­how man­ages to be both oppress­ive and ludicrous. There’s some­thing medi­aev­al about that dense, inco­her­ent cluster of forms: the main build­ing resem­bling a Rathaus with its stun­ted tower, while accom­mod­a­tion blocks tumble across the scrubby slopes like a walled hill town.

I have to walk some way past the Lagoon gates before I lose the sense of being silently sur­veilled. Papakow­hai Rd curves north­w­est, tra­cing the old shoreline, then falls into step with the motor­way. I pass a scrubby head­land, the land­scape opens up, and I enter the third of the cap­tive bays. On my right, a man­i­cured berm sep­ar­ate the road from a nar­row strip of bush. I cross the lawn to peer through the foliage: a slug­gish stream trickles through black mud, choked by weeds and clogged with incon­gru­ous arte­facts. A broad sec­tion of con­crete pipe, sub­sid­ing into the silt. A wag­on wheel. A water pump, rus­ted and broken.

Some­where beneath this water­logged forest rem­nant lie the remains of Bowler’s Wharf. Once part of the infra­struc­ture of trade between Māori and early col­on­ists, it was des­troyed by the earth­quakes of the mid 19th Cen­tury, but if I knew how to look I might be able to dis­cern its out­line. Instead, I fol­low the stream as it broadens into salt­marsh, form­ing a moat for the retire­ment castle that sits on a low bluff bey­ond.

The stream chan­nel meanders through reeds, rushes and a tox­ic fringe of lilies. Per­haps the res­id­ents above look down on the sepulchral white flowers and see their fate rising from the earth to take them. The calla lily’s funer­eal asso­ci­ations sup­posedly come from their white­ness, sym­bol­ising the res­tor­a­tion of inno­cence after death: a grim Judeo-Chris­ti­an world­view, whereby life’s only redemp­tion comes upon release from it. I like to think that the live­li­er inmates see, as O’Keefe and Freud did, vul­val con­nota­tions in the flowers’ sen­su­al folds.

The hills behind once bloomed bright with golden flowers, and this sub­urb has taken their name. Papakow­hai, a land covered in flower­ing kōwhai. I used to take the name more lit­er­ally, to mean yel­low earth, and in road­side cut­tings and the raw cuts that pre­cede new devel­op­ment I see the sharp saf­fron yel­low of soils that drif­ted in on the wind, and beneath the loess hori­zon, the more sombre ochre of shattered grey­wacke. In spring some of the bluffs still come alive with kōwhai gold, but such bright flower­ing more often sig­nals gorse.

I’m reach­ing the north­ern end of the third arti­fi­cial lagoon. To my right, an inlet has mostly been filled in to form a soggy lawn called Papakow­hai Reserve, leav­ing a minus­cule tri­angle of estu­ar­ine reeds and mud­flats. On my left, there’s a still nar­row­er sliv­er of salt­marsh: just a trickle of water, with rocky out­crops and mats of salt-lov­ing suc­cu­lents, trapped between two cause­ways. As the creek peters out, Papakow­hai Rd becomes squeezed between anoth­er crum­bling yel­low head­land and the tire­less roar of the motor­way. A jumble of green sig­nage announces an upcom­ing junc­tion, and a spindly ped­es­tri­an bridge rises up to cross State High­way 1. I climb the nar­row ramp, buf­feted by the relent­less south­erly, and begin my approach to Paremata.