Before reach­ing the start­ing point of the jour­ney, I need to take a pre­lim­in­ary jour­ney, from some­thing resem­bling the heart of the city to the start of the high­way: the air­port. That in itself tells us some­thing about just where cit­ies fit into the whole “Nation­al Sig­ni­fic­ance” agenda. A city is nev­er an end in itself, just a portal to else­where.

So I begin in Man­ners St, wait­ing for the Air­port Fly­er. The streets them­selves are in flux, the popu­lace wary (though some­times not wary enough: look both ways). The signs are gone — TIME ZONE — leav­ing the wir­ing exposed to the bright Sunday light.

The Fly­er is on time. These buses aspire to high­er ech­el­ons of trans­port: it’s not just the name and brand­ing, but the leath­er seats, the air­con, the GPS dis­play and canned “next stop” voice that all speak of some­thing sleeker and more inter­na­tion­al than the clapped-out paro­chi­al­ism that the word “bus” still evokes. Arrivals and depar­tures: you’re already focused on your des­tin­a­tion. HAMILTON CANCELLED. Loc­als betray them­selves by tag­ging on.

The Golden Mile route, and its stor­ies, are well-rehearsed: the Battle(s) of Man­ners St, pigeons and pa, Cour­tenay Place’s evol­u­tion from swamp to ter­minus to brew­ers’ gold­mine (RTDs and R&B for the B&T crowd, segreg­ated her­it­age pubs for the luc­rat­ive baby­boomer rugby­head mar­ket). Past Queen Vic­tor­ia, sequestered on a grassy island, no longer the mag­net for Bolshev­iks that she was in her ori­gin­al Queen’s Wharf home, then weav­ing up the flank of her eponym­ous moun­tain. We enter a notori­ous ven­ue for games of pedestrian/car chick­en (that in the day­time doubles as a bus tun­nel).

The East­ern sub­urbs keep the Fly­er down to earth, ground­ing its cos­mo­pol­it­an pre­ten­sions in every­day hyper­loc­al real­ity. Bun­ga­lows, churches, explod­ing chip shops, YOUR LOCAL POINT. Through Hataitai, Kil­birnie, Ron­go­tai, via the increas­ingly famil­i­ar post-indus­tri­al nar­rat­ive of Tir­angi Rd (ware­house to Ware­house; fact­ory to retail ghetto), then Cook Strait bursts into view before us. Lyall Bay is dead flat, and dead empty: even our fam­ously optim­ist­ic surfers are else­where.

The road turns south again, and the land becomes noth­ing but infra­struc­ture. We rattle hard between run­way and riprap, a light tur­bop­rop lifts gently into the wide blue sky, and the break­wa­ters have noth­ing to break. The bus slides beneath the run­way, past sham­an­ic abstrac­tions (more Malevich than Las­caux, the min­im­al­ist cave-art of a tribe in a hurry) to the great S‑bend of Moa Pt. Pipes slith­er across battered hill­sides, the final pas­sages of the city’s ali­ment­ary canal. The infam­ous anus of Wel­ling­ton, at long last rig­or­ously ster­il­ised (biore­act­ors, ultra­vi­olet irra­di­ation), though the loc­als still mut­ter of inter­mit­tent mias­mas: those in the know blame fatty depos­its and occa­sion­al sea­wa­ter enemas.

Just around the corner, Peter Kundycki’s sculp­ture “Doo doos” pokes fun, a scato­lo­gic­al cairn mark­ing the hope­ful end of muni­cip­al shit­fights. Also out of sight from the bus, and in fact unread­able to any­one except real fly­ers, is an even lar­ger Kundycki piece, “Ko te Matau a Maui”. Why just stack con­crete riprap in rows, await­ing their turn in the Strait, when you can have them arranged in curls and koru? From the air, it’s some­where between Smith­son and Nazca, oppor­tun­ist­ic land art entwined with faux archae­ology.

The air­port is clean, effi­cient and well-mannered — no frazzled com­muter grind, no jet-lagged inter­con­tin­ent­al drift — and all quite dis­ap­point­ingly Mild at Heart. It’s still early, so I aim to emu­late one of Sinclair’s good hon­est greasy-spoon fry-ups to kick off the trek, but with the excep­tion of some uniden­ti­fi­able deep-fried gunk, it’s mostly Lamb­ton Quay-level quasi-healthy sand­wich fare. I even­tu­ally secure some­thing sat­is­fact­or­ily bacony, plus some cof­fee which is just good enough for Wel­ling­ton but just bad enough for an air­port, and take a seat by the giant run­way win­dow.

My hopes of immers­ing myself in the cease­less flow and res­on­ant place­less­ness of an inter­na­tion­al air­port have been long since dashed, because it’s a Sunday morn­ing and because, well, it’s Wel­ling­ton. I catch a glimpse of the infam­ous new inter­na­tion­al ter­min­al: The Rocks are fault-shattered and aus­tere from this angle, bewil­der­ingly anti-con­tex­tu­al yet crag­gily impress­ive, and utterly, resound­ingly unpump­kin­like. Without scale cues, they seem more like a dis­tant moun­tain range than a nearby build­ing. They’re the only thing that dis­rupts your sense of place: the rest of the ter­min­al focuses you out towards the Lyall Bay land­scape, won’t let you for­get where you are. The bus felt more glob­al and root­less than this.

I leave the ter­min­al, into a dark and taxi-rid­den under­croft, but it’s been lamely de-Bal­lard­ised with cheery acid-bright cor­por­ate col­our schemes. Then it’s out into the chirpy sun­light, air­port func­tion­al­ism on one side and golf-course on the oth­er. Ath’s cop­per nikau strike a note of sur­real­ism, hast­ily trans­planted from Civic Square to form a squatly-pro­por­tioned attempt at a gate­way. It’s not as psych­ic­ally dis­rupt­ive as the relo­ca­tion of Temple Bar, but dis­con­cert­ing non­ethe­less. There’s the briefest stretch of bijoux edge­lands (barbed wire, fuel tankers, bill­boards, dis­ap­pear­ing foot­paths) and then a green round­about: the start of the real jour­ney; the begin­ning of Nation­al Sig­ni­fic­ance; the dot at the bot­tom of the highway’s island-long exclam­a­tion mark. A sign: “1 BEGINS”.