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.