Notional Significance: Gorge

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The stretch of Hutt Rd from Kaiwarawhara to Ngaur­anga is a long, dry slog through an arti­fi­cial val­ley. The west­ern side is almost nat­ur­al, covered by ten­a­cious regen­er­a­tion, but often cut, but­tressed and battered to keep the slope from fail­ing, occa­sion­ally sliced by gul­lies and roads that scrabble up to to the moneyed cliffs above. The east­ern side is poorer in every sense. Between the road and the low bank of motor­way that forms the oth­er wall of the val­ley there’s a rib­bon of half-land, ini­tially littered with fal­ter­ing industry and big-box DIY (Place­makers in a place­less space), then a strip of scrubby green which exists only to mit­ig­ate and sep­ar­ate. Its only role is to not be any­thing else.

At the cusp between the two lies an aban­doned pet­rol sta­tion. On dirty glass the clean type reads “VENDING ROOM CLOSED”, then apo­lo­gises cor­por­ately before inform­ing you that “Cold drinks are still avail­able from the vend­ing machine”. But that too is dead — elec­tri­city deac­tiv­ated, coin slot gath­er­ing rust — and the toi­lets (“Exeloo facil­it­ies are designed for your com­fort and safety”) are equally defunct. It’s an instant ruin of the Oil Age, as blind, empty and obsol­ete as the think­ing that con­tin­ues to pour bil­lions into motor­way con­struc­tion. Unser­viced and incon­veni­enced, I drag myself onward.

The rail lines begin to diverge, the Hutt-bound tracks now hug­ging the pave­ment while the Main Trunk loops away and climbs a gentle bank, wind­ing up for its leap into the hill­side. I check the Hutt line both ways, check again for any­one watch­ing, and hop across the white rail­ing and the nar­row tracks. I enter the non-land, the “verge” in many senses, a park­land glimpsed from car or car­riage but nev­er inten­ded for human hab­it­a­tion. The com­bin­a­tion of soft lush grass and mod­est copses should evoke the etern­al savanna, the evol­u­tion­ary Eden of Duttonesque rev­er­ie, but instead it’s an uncanny val­ley of land­scap­ing wrong­ness. Cap­tured rivu­lets trickle blindly among weeds; cars growl and thun­der just out of sight; rails and warn­ing signs admon­ish inter­lopers; the only spoor is rab­bit drop­pings and graf­fiti on rot­ting bill­boards.

At the point where the North Island Main Trunk Line clam­bers over the road and into its first long tun­nel, I scramble back over the lines and onto the foot­path. The rail­way bridge is old iron, girders and riv­ets, but the net­work is drag­ging itself self-con­sciously into the 21st Cen­tury. Brand-new rail­way sub­sta­tions with aes­thet­ic pre­ten­sions crouch beside the lines, tilt-slabs tilted in anoth­er dimen­sion to evoke speed and pro­gress, Futur­ist bunkers guarded by razor­wire loops. Across the road there’s a small plaque attached to a pion­eers’ horse trough, a filling sta­tion from the days before the Hutt Rd knew iron horses or horse­less car­riages. It lan­guishes amid con­crete and gravel, the remorse­less creep of Tra­des­can­tia.

Finally I reach the base of the Gorge, and a clash of mod­ern­it­ies. A tangle of fly­overs do their Bal­lar­d­i­an best to con­vey mid-cen­tury infra­struc­tur­al vir­il­ity; a geodes­ic half-dome on the hill­side is redol­ent of techno-hip­pie escap­ism; but the ware­houses of Jarden Mile and the name­less asphalt islands are exem­plars of early 21st-Cen­tury Cheapism. Long-run, tilt-slab, bot­tom-line.

This clot of divided high­ways, side-ramps and non-roads is tough to nav­ig­ate, but the bot­tom of the Gorge was always thus. The first European set­tlers had to pay Māori to ferry them across the river mouth in canoes, or even piggy­back them one by one to avoid wet feet. After the first bridge arrived, half of Te Wharepōuri’s waka stood as a memori­al beside the stream, before it suc­cumbed to age and weath­er and crumbled onto the road, into sheds and for­get­ful­ness. The Gorge was still untamed when the first high­way came, the car­riage­way gouged away by floods in 1941, but the road bit back, eat­ing into the bluff in 1963 when the inter­change was born. The motor­way con­sumed Fort Kel­burn, which once guarded the har­bour from the Rus­si­an threat, its only memory a stumpy road still called Fort St. Above the junc­tion, the hills still loom: stark, watch­ful, unfor­giv­ing.

The stream itself is now humi­li­ated, cor­seted between con­crete walls or bound in storm­wa­ter dun­geons, but now and again it reveals its old iden­tity, tum­bling in impa­tient rap­ids over boulder dams or coil­ing in deep, slow atav­ist­ic pools beside reefs of bare rock. Bey­ond the police dog train­ing grounds, the river has to jump through its own hoops, an obstacle course of cul­verts and weirs, as it weaves back and forth beneath the motor­way. Actu­ally, “motor­way” is not quite cor­rect: though I’m back up close to SH1 for the first time since Thorndon’s terra firma, this stretch of Centen­ni­al High­way can­not strictly be called a motor­way, not with a foot and cycle path beside it. Nev­er­the­less, with a half metre of grav­elly con­crete to nego­ti­ate and only a kerb to sep­ar­ate me from six lanes of grunt­ing, grind­ing traffic, the dis­tinc­tion seems moot.

This side of the road is clean, unlike the clut­ter that trickles down Glover St oppos­ite: anonym­ous lock-ups; white­w­are ware­houses; big-box churches (mus­cu­lar Chris­tian­ity pumped up to indus­tri­al strength). Pylons stand aloof, hold­ing power aloft. The walls of the gorge press inwards as the rail­way springs over­head, grabbing a fleet­ing gasp of light and air between the musty tun­nels of the main line. Road, rail and stream entwine like braids, weav­ing their own modes of sig­ni­fic­ance through the frac­tured land­scape.

On my left is the val­ley where Alfred Tyer, king of the meat byproducts, once prac­tised the ancient arts of tan­ning and fell­mon­gery. His nox­ious, fleshly alchemy trans­muted cor­rupt­ible skin into endur­ingly pro­tect­ive leath­er, but the dom­in­ant indus­tries now provide phys­ic­al pro­tec­tion, trans­port­a­tion and elim­in­a­tion of the oth­er­wise intan­gible products of the inform­a­tion age. Heavy walls bear the logos of Data Secur­ity Ser­vices and Doc­u­ment Destruc­tion Ser­vice; win­dow­less white vans carry the stout shield of ACM Cur­rency Man­age­ment. High fences, high voltage.

I detour up Tyers Rd, invest­ig­at­ing the anonym­ous sheds that sit on an arti­fi­cial plat­eau. They huddle at the base of the upper cliffs, zig­gur­at forms roughly carved from fran­gible bed­rock. From the upper road, the big sheds on the old tan­nery site below almost achieve an abstract beauty: ware­house rooftops coaxed into a shim­mer­ing com­pos­i­tion of angu­lar forms. They’re part of an indus­tri­al park some­times called “Trans­port Vil­lage”, though of course it’s all trans­port and no vil­lage.

Motion­less. Through dead still air the sounds of the high­way come drift­ing up, ming­ling with cicada song in the fierce flat heat of sum­mer. The built envir­on­ment is mostly pre­dict­able, the edge­lands lin­gua franca of asphalt and cor­rug­ated metall, but amid all this there are touches of exurb­an sur­real­ism. The sub­sta­tion is done up like a PoMo swim­ming pool, its ele­ment­al power of trans­form­a­tion (and trans­form­a­tion of power) domest­ic­ated in baby blue tiles and stucco, cam­ou­flaged with faux-Deco and cod-Clas­sic­al flour­ishes. And then I’m struck by the unset­tling inno­cence of a baby doll, impaled in either macabre humour or unhinged malice upon the rail­ings of an unknow­able depot.

Back to the high­way, and up again. The north­east slopes are raw and craggy, true gorge, where hunters still track and kill wild goats, but to the west the val­ley opens up into a broad­er basin, where docile anim­als and the earth itself are torn apart and pro­cessed for con­sump­tion. Shrill yel­low hop­pers mark the retail arm of the quarry that is slowly chew­ing its way north, crush­ing the land­scape into bite-sized chunks of gravel. Fur­ther down the road, obli­vi­ous sheep spend their last anim­ate hours penned beneath trans­lu­cent roofs, stacked above barbed wire and an intest­in­al tangle of shin­ing pipes. Warn­ing signs brand me an intruder, but the blind trucks keep trundling by, pay­ing no notice, so I wander fur­ther in, south of the abat­toir.

The land­scape veers between indus­tri­al, quasi-rur­al and unearthly. A reti­cent stream trickles some­where below, all but hid­den in a wooded gully. A stock track meanders through tus­sock and gorse, and a simple weather­board house stands sen­tinel on the hill­side, alone amid the broom and fen­nel, obli­vi­ous to the loom­ing wave of sub­urb­an sprawl on the crest of Mt Misery above. There’s some­thing wrong with the gravel on the road: it glints and twinkles, crunches omin­ously under­foot. It’s more glass than stone, lead­ing to a mini­ature moun­tain range of bottles and jars, piled into peaks and ridges that par­ody the hills bey­ond. The greens, golds and browns of the land­scape are reflec­ted in recyc­ling — dusty drifts of Ber­nadino, Ragu­letto sauce, Corona, a mediocre Scotch. The road squeaks and shat­ters, tinkles like frost beneath my boots as I leave the crys­tal world and head back for the last leg of the gorge.

Trucks wheeze and grumble against the steep­ness of the grade, and I know how they feel. The road now cuts a deep V through ragged, ser­rated slopes, sev­en lanes of traffic chok­ing out any last semb­lance of the gorge as nat­ur­al land­form. But after a few minutes’ slog the sky opens up and the road begins to flat­ten. An off-ramp peels away, before a fake-doored stor­age depot (perched on the ridge like a red-and-white cater­pil­lar) and the diag­on­al slice of an over­pass sig­nal the prom­ise of New Lands bey­ond. Ped­es­tri­ans are her­ded away onto a segreg­ated path, but before it slides into an under­pass there’s a glimpse of some­thing sur­pris­ing: anoth­er deep cool pool among the regen­er­at­ing bush, with the dis­tant sound of fall­ing water as a faint remind­er of the power that ori­gin­ally carved this val­ley.

Even at walk­ing speed, I can sense the slack­en­ing gradi­ent, the impend­ing bal­list­ic pause at the apex of a para­bola. Before the high­way flat­tens, it passes beneath the New­lands over­bridge, which is one for afi­cion­ados of the genre: bold stan­chions like an inver­ted tri­dent plunged into the earth, sharp-edged and steely, battle­ship grey. But then the road seems to get a second wind, coil­ing in pre­par­a­tion for anoth­er steady rise as it once again becomes hon­est-to-god Motor­way — mean­ing that the foot­path has to part ways from the high­way. At last, my feet feel the fall of land as they fol­low the off-ramp down into the wide flat bowl of John­son­ville.