Notional Significance: Clearing

 [See all Notion­al Sig­ni­fic­ance posts]

The offramp leads me down into what, for want of a bet­ter term, I will call the heart of John­son­ville. The loc­al RSA greets me with a Bofors gun and an ad for its eponym­ous res­taur­ant (“Fam­ily Friendly Envir­on­ment”). Along with the Sal­va­tion Army, Super Liquor, a ser­vice sta­tion and a fast food chain, this forms the south­ern gate­way to the cap­it­al of the north­ern sub­urbs: a tangled semi­ot­ic spa­ghetti of war, booze and reli­gion; con­veni­ence, glut­tony and fam­ily; topped off with a slick of oil. The Kiwi dream.

The main road is a haphaz­ard strip of chain stores and brave but unre­mark­able loc­al enter­prises. I need one last snack to round off the long day’s walk from Ghuznee St, and I remem­ber the cruel joke: “What’s unique and worth­while in John­son­ville? Nada.” So I stop at the self-pro­claimed “NZ’s greatest bakery” for an admit­tedly bet­ter-than-aver­age savoury roll, before cut­ting back to the rail­way sta­tion through a mall that seems all the more lost and des­ultory when seen against glisten­ing future vis­ions of the mall-to-come.

A week later I return to John­son­ville, pre­par­ing for the next leg. For the third Sunday in a row, it’s preter­nat­ur­ally hot and still, and in oth­er cir­cum­stances, it could be called glor­i­ous. The train wriggles and clat­ters through gorges and cosy inland val­leys, Ngaio’s Tarikaka rail­way set­tle­ment recall­ing the days when the Wel­ling­ton-Man­awatu line was the hero­ic pre­curs­or to the North Island Main Trunk Line. But the car­riages now squeal to a rude halt at John­son­ville, the way blocked by a rough-edged con­crete cuboid, the former main line still faintly legible in the soft curve of Moore­field Rd.

Fur­ther along the street, stran­ded between the med­ic­al centre and an estate agent’s, a memori­al lamp­post (“Erec­ted by his friends to the memory of the late Tr. L. C. Ret­ter who fell at the battle of Bothas­burg, South Africa”) stands out as a rare rem­nant of the past. Behind it, a con­crete bal­us­trade looks like half of a bridge, though it has no com­pan­ion across the road, just a McDon­alds car­park. Once the stream enters the under­world beneath the bal­us­trade, there’s no hint of where it might end up. For John­son­ville straddles a cusp between two catch­ments, and the waters in this glor­i­fied ditch might end up in Te Whan­ganui-a-Tara, or they might begin the long fall towards Pori­rua and the Tas­man Sea. From a hydro­lo­gic­al per­spect­ive, per­haps this should be the “nat­ur­al” north­ern bound­ary of Wel­ling­ton, where the grav­it­a­tion­al pull of Port Nich­olson finally loses its influ­ence and the lay of the land­scape begins to tilt north­wards. But the flat­ness of the John­son­ville basin induces weight­less­ness and inde­cision. The streams meander leth­ar­gic­ally between lots, pop­ping up in back yards before slither­ing back into cul­verts, for­get­ting their way just as they them­selves are for­got­ten beneath the sub­urb­an plat.

But hun­ger has its own grav­ity, and I’m drawn on in search of hon­est stodge in a greasy-spoon caff. I nego­ti­ate the Scylla and Charib­dis of McDon­alds and KFC, pass up on the appet­ising com­bin­a­tion of “Health Shop J’Ville” and “The Roast Canteen” (both con­veni­ently loc­ated beneath the Lychg­ate funer­al home), and settle on some­thing called “Fresh Bun”. This seems at first like the closest approach to hon­esty, but then appears to be a Mr Bun ripoff: a one-off low-rent sub­urb­an café, imit­at­ing a nation­wide chain of low-rent sub­urb­an cafés, that are in turn a mass-pro­duced com­modi­fic­a­tion of the tra­di­tion­al Kiwi low-rent sub­urb­an café. Baudril­lard would be suf­fer­ing a simu­lac­rum migraine by this stage, as he con­tem­plates the rep­lica Chinese swords and dusty plastic daf­fodils beneath the acous­tic tiles, but I’m under­go­ing the trans­ition between what Kings­ley Amis called the phys­ic­al and the meta­phys­ic­al hangovers. I need hearty sat­ur­ated fats and strong black cof­fee; what I get is an amorph­ous puddle of scrambled eggs that com­petes in pal­lor with the soggy, barely toast­er-kissed white bread, and the sort of impot­able bat­tery acid that even the Amer­ic­ans have learned to stop call­ing “cof­fee”. I check the news on my phone, and raise an eye­brow at the name of the WiFi net­work that pops up: “Saint Death”.

Grease-laden and under­caf­fein­ated, I head briefly south­wards then up a nar­row ser­vice road called Nor­man Lane. Here, among auto­shops, cell­phone towers and the back walls of a retail park, John­son­ville bur­ies a bit more of its past. The Meth­od­ist Church was demol­ished in the Sev­en­ties, but its cemetery lives on, pressed on all sides by asphalt and steel, stones sink­ing into con­crete or leaned upon by work­shop walls.

The lane bends left, sidles between ware­houses and the high­way bar­ri­ers, and brings me to the true apex of the motor­way. I stand beside the stream of cars and trucks, listen­ing to their Dop­plered howl, feel­ing the pen­dent moment between ascent and des­cent, like the halfway mark of a domest­ic flight when the jets relax and you sense the island slide beneath you. And at this very moment — with­in reach of the tar­mac, sur­roun­ded by ribbed armco, stained con­crete, no-ques­tions-asked Best West­erns and ripped fish­nets of chain-link fen­cing — I’m treated to the per­fect Bal­lar­d­i­an spec­tacle of a ’58 Cadillac, all fet­ish­ist­ic chrome, slith­ery fins and gap­ing radi­at­or maw, speed­ing towards me. A flash of sil­ver and aqua­mar­ine, and it’s gone, its tur­bu­lent wake pluck­ing at my shirt, and I’m back in the mundane gorse-rid­den present.

Will Self praised J.G. Bal­lard as “the purest psy­cho­geo­graph­er of us all, ever dis­solv­ing the par­tic­u­lar and the his­tor­ic­al in the tran­si­ent and the psych­ic”, and that’s what strikes me about this trans­form­a­tion of a moment. While Self’s friend Nick Papadi­mitri­ou once wryly noted that most psy­cho­geo­graph­ers “are really only loc­al his­tor­i­ans with an atti­tude prob­lem”, the move­ment has the poten­tial and per­haps even the respons­ib­il­ity to go bey­ond that. It’s this real­isa­tion that helps me get over my ambi­val­ence towards writers who impose tenu­ous mys­tic­al nar­rat­ives onto straight­for­ward con­tem­por­ary land­scapes. Like Sinclair’s ley-lines, Sebald’s her­rings and Chtcheglov’s “ghosts bear­ing all the prestige of their legends”, the Cadillac’s gleam­ing Amer­ic­an muscle enacts a totem­ic alchemy, tangling the ima­gin­ary into the fab­ric of real­ity, teas­ing a new sig­ni­fic­ance from the bare fac­tu­al strands of his­tory and obser­va­tion.

Bal­lard and Sin­clair would each have their own read­ing of the under­pass that slides beneath the car­riage­way. The walls are an urb­an pal­impsest of tags and taunts — a des­per­ate col­lage of names, icons, sexu­al frus­tra­tions (“TREV CAN’T GET IT UP”), greed (“ALL ‘BOUT/MONEY”) and racial defi­ance (“BLACKPOWER”) — but the lane­way then emerges from the under­world into the com­fort­able sub­ur­bia of Arthur Car­man St. NZTA’s new con­trol rooms do their best to dis­creetly settle into the domest­ic scene, dressed in a mod­est mod­ern­ity that’s a taste­ful devol­u­tion from the spikily hon­est former com­plex on the oth­er side of Hel­ston Rd over­bridge.

It’s this bridge, with deftly-poised sup­ports evok­ing the con­crete dynam­ism of a diving board next to a Bond villain’s swim­ming pool, that reminds me that John­son­ville was once the future. For the stretch of road between here and Pori­rua was the first motor­way in New Zea­l­and, con­struc­ted smack bang in the optim­ist­ic middle of the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tury. That was indeed a nation­ally sig­ni­fic­ant moment: the birth of the motor­ised dream whereby speed, space and con­veni­ence added up to free­dom. The north­ern sub­urbs bloomed along the motorway’s banks, fed by cheap oil and liv­ing on the but­ter­fat of the land, attempt­ing to trans­late Godzone’s bucol­ic ori­gin myths into the bur­geon­ing city, one quarter-acre at a time.

And while the Kiwi dream is more than a little Amer­ic­an in ori­gin, did this new sub­urb­an idyll also have a nation­al­ist sig­ni­fic­ance? We all know Denis Glover’s pithy state­ments of lit­er­ary nation­al­ism (“I do not dream of Sus­sex downs/or quaint old England’s/quaint old towns/I think of what may yet be seen/in John­son­ville or Ger­aldine”), but was he really anti­cip­at­ing a post-colo­ni­al sub­urb­an heav­en? Did Glover dream of off-ramps, drive-thrus and chain stores? I doubt it, for when he wrote “Home Thoughts” in 1936, John­son­ville was far from an exem­plar of met­ro­pol­it­an sub­ur­bia, and in fact it was not all that dif­fer­ent from Ger­aldine. It truly was the vil­lage that it some­times claims to be, with stock­yards still oper­at­ing at its centre and cattle driv­en through the rough streets to the Ngaur­anga slaughter­house. Now, John­son­ville is at the oth­er end of the killing chain: it’s the cus­tom­ers who drive to the products of slaughter, circ­ling the drive-in bur­ger­ies, the branded feed-lots. Con­sumer as product.

Between the two Hel­ston Road over­bridges, between the obsol­es­cent NZTA install­a­tion and the stump of Frank John­son St, the view is com­mand­ing. Some­where near here was the site of Clifford’s Stock­ade, one of a string of crude mili­tia sta­tions erec­ted along the Old Pori­rua Road in the wake of the Wair­au Mas­sacre: in the Euro­centric rhet­or­ic of the day, “for the pur­pose of pre­vent­ing any pred­at­ory incur­sions of the nat­ives”. This would have been a con­nec­tion to some of New Zealand’s defin­ing moments, to the cam­paigns of Te Ran­gi­hae­ata and Te Rauparaha and the schemes of Gov­ernor Grey, but the site has been cleared of all traces. As archae­olo­gists said of the site, “ridge was cut by motor­way. Noth­ing to see.”

Oblit­er­a­tion of his­tory is always part of the motor­way deal, but the act of clear­ing away is a defin­ing char­ac­ter­ist­ic of John­son­ville: before it was even a Ville, it was Johnson’s Clear­ing. “Clear­ing” could be read as a verb, and indeed Mr Johnson’s saw­mill would have been the bene­fi­ciary of much of that clear­ing, but in its geo­graph­ic­al role as a noun it is defined by lack, by what it is not. The sali­ent prop­erty of a clear­ing is the absence of forest, and the prac­tic­al pos­sib­il­it­ies that such an empti­ness enables. John­son­ville was born from such prag­mat­ism, and today things are still being cleared away and star­ted anew.

Even the one real his­tor­ic land­mark in the town centre, St John’s Church, is the res­ult of repeated oblit­er­a­tions and rebuild­ings. It is the fifth church on the site: the oth­ers suc­cumbed to fire, but the parish­ion­ers star­ted over again and again, main­tain­ing con­tinu­ity of wor­ship on this stub­bornly church­worthy emin­ence. But anoth­er eras­ure has been at work here, one that was willed by the church rather than imposed by mis­for­tune. I’d hoped to find the grave of the Branks fam­ily, vic­tims of an appar­ently arbit­rary numer­ic­al utu (Hen­are Maroro vowed to take one pāke­hā life for each year he had spent in pris­on; wid­ower John Branks and his three chil­dren happened to be the ones to feel his axe), but the front of the church is plain, fea­ture­less grass. In the 1960s, mind­ful of the costs of manu­ally tend­ing a grave­yard, the church fath­ers had it con­ver­ted to a lawn cemetery. As the Bolton St cemetery had to be sac­ri­ficed for speed, the memor­ies of St Johns’ faith­ful dead were lost in the name of con­veni­ent main­ten­ance. Unchosen, unmarked, the Branks fam­ily rests unseen, their bod­ies fol­ded into the for­get­ful earth, some­where beneath the respect­able, easy-care lawn of the grave­less grave­yard. Noth­ing to see.

I’m temp­ted to write that the pres­ence of death is palp­able beneath the wide streets of John­son­ville, but this is where the fantasy of psy­cho­geo­graph­ic­al determ­in­ism, of the inerad­ic­able geni­us loci, is so mis­lead­ingly seduct­ive. It’s true that the Branks were not the last John­son­vil­lians to be hacked to death in their beds, and that the logos of funer­al homes com­pete with fast food out­lets for domin­ion over the streets­cape. But giv­en a single vis­it, geo­graphy can­not be dis­en­gaged from his­tory, let alone from per­son­al exper­i­ence and mood. Today is the first Sunday since the 22nd of Feb­ru­ary. A flag hangs limp. Half mast. A cler­gy­man leads a small con­greg­a­tion in an out­door memori­al ser­vice, cool amid the deep shad­ow of a mac­ro­carpa hedge. Nation­al tragedy is layered over per­son­al mel­an­cho­lia, which in turn col­ours the faded sig­nals of any time­less pat­terns that I might try to dis­cern amid the shift­ing land­scape.

But if I am to trust my instincts about this place, per­haps what I’m sens­ing is not the close­ness of death. Per­haps it’s just that this far away from the child­less lib­er­al bubble of down­town, with its willed or unwilled sus­pen­sion of gen­er­a­tion, the whole hon­est cycle of life is proudly expressed: get born, go to school, get a job, get mar­ried, get a mort­gage, breed, retire … and head to your grave watch­ing your off­spring begin the same cycle. The met­ro­pol­it­an snob in me wants to say that this sub­urb offers noth­ing more than fast food, a slow death, and a quiet for­get­ting. But while the land­scape of eras­ure (bur­ied streams, cleansed cemeter­ies, severed rail­ways) encour­ages this cyn­ic­al read­ing, the truth is that John­son­ville is layered not with expunged pasts but with van­ished futures. Each of Johnsonville’s pasts was a dream of tomor­row: of a day when the church won’t burn down, when the motorway’s sleek curves brings speed and free­dom, when the stul­ti­fy­ing cob­webs of the old coun­try are blown away by the inter­na­tion­al glam­our of a big­ger, bright­er mall.

The same could be said of any out­er sub­urb or any pro­vin­cial town in New Zea­l­and. If Wel­ling­ton is sup­posed to be young, urbane and self-con­sciously well-edu­cated, then maybe this is where “Wel­ling­ton” ends and “New Zea­l­and” begins. The sec­tions may no longer be quite a quarter acre, the beer may now come in stub­bies rather than half-gal­lons, and the pavlova comes frozen from Count­down, but para­dise can still be found in fam­ily, per­son­al space, con­form­ity, secur­ity and con­veni­ence: all under­writ­ten by the motor vehicle. Along Middleton Road, bey­ond the roar­ing gyre of the round­about, I press on, deep into New Zea­l­and.