Ten Years in Pōneke: Part Two – (a very long walk)

In 2015 I was liv­ing at Weir House. It was my first year of study and the first time I’d spent any longer than two weeks away from my par­ents. I was moon­ing over a girl who did­n’t like me back, bad at being a per­son and mak­ing con­nec­tions and pretty sure I was­n’t into what I was study­ing – so yeah. Mixed emo­tions.

Weir House was great. Sure, the food had its ups and downs, but the people were won­der­ful. It was a homey kind of place, des­pite hav­ing over 150 people liv­ing there, and I soon grew close to most of the folk liv­ing on my floor, thanks in no small part to our won­der­ful RA, who was kind and a box of birds and super good to talk to.

But I was still rest­less.

My first ever long hike in Pōneke was on one of those days where I could­n’t get the stat­ic to stop under my skin. It was foggy and a lil rainy, and I don’t think I had much of a plan, just a desire to go to Wētā and a fear that was very huge around buy­ing a bus card.

(My mum had to talk me through get­ting on a bus for the first time, ’cause I was very scared. There’s no real pub­lic trans­port in my homet­own and I’m bad with new things. These days – bloody love buses. Wish there were more of ’em. Wish they were cheap­er.)

So on the 14th of March 2015 I walked to Wētā and walked most of the way back home. On the 1st of Feb­ru­ary I relived the exper­i­ence.

Most of it.

In 2025, I’m doing ten things to cel­eb­rate liv­ing in Pōneke for ten years. There’ll be stor­ies. Pics. Non­sense. Check out art­icle #1 here.

Why did I choose for this sec­tion of road walk­ing to be part of my ten things? We’ll get there.

#2 – Walk from Weir House to Wētā Work­shop (and back??)

My memory is awful. It’s always been awful. Most of my past is strained through chunks of grey­ing fuzz, so piecing togeth­er the route I took for this endeavor took a lot of time and a lot of scrolling through my Google Timeline (basic­ally use­less). Min­im­al memory, no map, so…

What I did have was 20 pho­tos from a Face­book album called ‘that time i walked halfway across the city’, which is a col­lec­tion of stormy shots of Wel­ling­ton, taken at vari­ous points along the route. Most are unre­mark­able, but they did at least give me a vague idea of where I wanted to go. I would aim to recre­ate some of them along my walk.

I planned a route around those using logic and the know­ledge that I tend to grav­it­ate towards the famil­i­ar. I knew that I had­n’t walked the entire way back, as an 18+ km day is some­thing I abso­lutely would have remembered, so I noted a logic­al bus stop and was ready to head off.

You’ll see there’s some dif­fer­ences between them. Lest we not get caught up in the details, I’ll explain as I go.

It’s 10.05am and I’m stand­ing in the play­ground out­side Weir House. The wing I used to live in has been torn down; it was the second new­est, but the most earth­quake prone, so it’s gone.

There’s a gap in the trees that twinges some­where in my chest – when I was lonely in my single room in that hall I used to stare up at the book­shelf above my bed. We wer­en’t sup­posed to mark up our rooms but every single past res­id­ent of the room had writ­ten their name on the under­side of the book­shelf, one tiny remind­er that we’d all been through it and made it out.

I had scrawled my name there too, just before I left; a tiny trans­gres­sion (I feel insane guilt if I do some­thing wrong, no mat­ter how small) and figured it would be there forever.

Not the case. I head off on my walk.

Passing the Kel­burn Foun­tain I’m thrown back to the times of being drunk in Kel­burn Park with the rest of my hall mates (we got kicked out into the park after 10pm cause no alco­hol in the hall after quiet hours – still not sure of the effic­acy of that), and how I’d pulled a con­cussed hall­mate out of the foun­tain after she’d nearly drowned one night.

Some people are play­ing crick­et in the park. I turn left and head down the hill, snap­ping pics one and two just above Talavera Sta­tion. The route reeks – I real­ise it’s just an uncol­lec­ted rub­bish bag as I pass it. I snap pic 3 on top of the Ever­ton Ter­race, tak­ing a while to find the right angle, and then head down towards Par­lia­ment.

Why past me took the longest, most con­vo­luted route to Wētā, I have no idea, but still, I fol­low. Con­tort­ing my body over a parked e‑scooter (not a prob­lem ten years ago), I man­age to snap Pic 4 head­ing down Wood­ward St.

Fuck it. I don’t want to push past cruise ship pas­sen­gers as I walk down the Golden Mile. I cut down to the water­front, via Te Awe Lib­rary instead. It’s grey­ing on the water­front too, but even then, it’s nev­er a hard­ship to be out by the sea.

I stop to answer an email by Frank Kitts and look back up to see this guy star­ing at me. Nice.

It’s 11.05am, ’cause I’ve been ambling, so I duck into the Exchange Atri­um to do a radio inter­view. They ask great ques­tions. I’m less than a km from the stu­dio. Ten years ago I was­n’t doing four radio inter­views in one week.

With the know­ledge that this quest is for my own bene­fit and isn’t as fueled by my own anxi­ety as the last time I did it, I snap Pic 5 by the Tri­pod and scoot­er through the Mt Vic tun­nel. It’s a deeply unpleas­ant ped­es­tri­an exper­i­ence, and the faster I’m outta there the bet­ter.

Ditch­ing my scoot­er in Haitaitai, I head off down towards Kil­birnie, passing the entrance to the net­ball grounds. Way back when in 2020 and 2021 when I was barely employed, I used to sup­port my income mak­ing cof­fees on the dodgi­est cof­fee machine in the world at the net­ball each Sat­urday. That build­ing isn’t there any­more either.

Times change.

There’s a lot of people on the water­front. It’s not that nice a day, cur­rently, but the walk­way is packed. Y’know, look­ing back on Google Maps, this area’s changed a lot since I was last here.

It’s got­ten much bet­ter. A cer­tain selec­tion of the Old City grouses about any change to the struc­ture of the city, but one hopes they soon have as pos­it­ive an atti­tude about cycle­ways as they do about this walk­way.

Espe­cially con­sid­er­ing how awful this walk­way was when I was last here.

I spend an inor­din­ate amount of time try­ing to emu­late Pics 6 and 7 around the bend in the road towards Miramar. The Wel­ling­ton logo on the hill has a soc­cer ball in it at the moment. Is that for the Phoenix? I don’t fol­low sport.

Last time I did this trip, I wore through my pants while doing it. These days, I hike in sports leg­gings, and they’re still hold­ing on strong, but I stop at the same op-shop in Miramar and buy myself a shirt with par­rots on it. Not sure what this means for me, but it’s a cute shirt.

Then, my stroll through Miramar con­tin­ues.

It’s funny. When I first made this trip, ten long years ago, I was in this optim­ist­ic haze around the film industry. I really was excited by the concept of being in Wel­ling­ton and being so close to an industry I loved and wanted to be part of.

These days, with the exper­i­ence I have across the theatre and film industry… I am… less light­hearted about my wander through Miramar.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s won­der­ful people in the industry. I’ve met lifelong friends and col­lab­or­at­ors through my work in it. There’s just a lot of bad.

Sex pests we’re not allowed to talk about, unbear­able amounts of nepot­ism, and inter­na­tion­al dir­ect­ors act­ively try­ing to swing our polit­ics to the right. The arts industry, like the coun­try on a whole, is not as clean and green as it appears to be.

Cyn­icism firmly estab­lished, I stop in front of Wel­ling­ton’s most import­ant her­it­age land­mark, the derel­ict gas tank on Park Road. Wow, does it suck! Sure wish there were bet­ter her­it­age rules in place so the thing could be knocked down, but there’s noth­ing more Wel­ling­ton than a hand­ful of people with influ­ence act­ively stone­walling pro­gress.

More pics. Park Road Post Pro­duc­tion, a mur­al that’s not there any­more, and then finally, I’m at Wētā. Feels a bit less like a mile­stone than it did in 2015. Y’know, I’ve nev­er actu­ally done a tour here? They’ve moved a bunch of the statues around so I can­’t quite emu­late the pics I took last time, but I get close enough.

Still don’t take a tour. Maybe I’ll do one for my 20th long walk anniversary.

Goal firmly accom­plished, I start head­ing back towards home, wan­der­ing through Miramar Park, which has a very cool geocache hid­ing in it, pick­ing up a bottle of Lewis Road Cream­ery chocol­ate milk (cause I bought one last time), and then hop­ping on an e‑scooter to head back towards the CBD. I com­plete my day of non­sense travel by get­ting KCB, which is anoth­er one of those many changes to the city that act­ively bene­fits it.

(Last time I did this trek I got Chinese food from the buf­fet in Cour­tenay Cent­ral and drowned myself in salty noodles. Fly high, Read­ings Cour­tenay, maybe one day you’ll be open again.)

I did this walk ’cause I thought I would learn some­thing about myself, but instead I’m just… tired. My feet hurt. Fringe looms on the hori­zon. I’ve changed a lot myself in ten years. More friends, worse health, more money, few­er fucks to give.

2015 Emma was scared of the future and scared of uni­ver­sity. Scared of a lot of things; of get­ting on a bus, spend­ing money, speak­ing up in lec­tures. Scared ’cause my high school friend­ships were unrav­el­ing in front of my eyes, and I was los­ing friends as they found the lives they wanted to lead.

These days I’m a bit less scared. It’s not easy, I’m still anxious and lost in stormy seas some­times, but I know I’m good at things, and I’m not afraid to speak out for what I care about. I’ve grown, and I’ve changed. The city has too.

I think that might be pro­gress.