Notional Significance: Halfway

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On one side: the beige of town­hous­es; the her­met­ic white­ness of Fletch­er Construction’s offices; the twee com­forts of a gar­den cen­tre. On the oth­er: a wall of green­ery, smug­ly set­tled exotics loom­ing over dense indige­nous under­growth and the raw-cut clay below. Hard-won colo­nial­ism con­geals into aspi­ra­tional her­itage, but with a psy­cho­geo­graph­i­cal trace lin­ger­ing at the edges of con­scious­ness — this is one of the old ways, a track tra­versed for gen­er­a­tions before the Euro­peans arrived.

A cal­cu­lat­ed­ly rough-hewn sign tells you that this is Glen­side, then com­pli­cates the issue with the text “The Halfway 1840 — 1928”. While “Glen­side” has the whiff of a cyn­i­cal developer’s coinage — the sort of instant nos­tal­gia often cooked up on the spot to lend qua­si-rur­al des-res ambi­ence to the lat­est tranche of place­less sprawl — its ori­gins are more demo­c­ra­t­ic. When the for­mer name “The Halfway” proved too ambigu­ous for the post office, they held a com­pe­ti­tion. A home­sick Scot­tish set­tler thought it remind­ed her of the glens, and there must have been some­thing in the gen­tle hills and trick­ling burns that res­onat­ed with the locals.

For a phys­i­cal reminder of The Halfway, I walk past the gar­den cen­tre, ignore the bar­rage of “Pri­vate Road” warn­ings, and head for the pic­turesque husk of a house at the end of a nar­row met­al road. This is the last of sev­er­al Halfway Hous­es that once pro­vid­ed wel­come shel­ter and pos­si­bly even more wel­come booze for trav­ellers, halfway between Porirua and Welling­ton. At the moment it looks halfway to ruin, and a long way from a decent drink. Ply­wood win­dows, tum­bling pil­lars, weath­er­boards lost in lichen, a chim­ney crum­bling back to clay.

Behind the house, past the poplars and ubiq­ui­tous macro­carpas, there’s a glimpse of time­less bucol­ic Kiwiana. Hors­es amble along well-worn dusty paths, shel­ter belts and broom step up the rolling slopes, streams wind lazi­ly through what by Welling­ton stan­dards has always been a gen­tle and well-watered hol­low, and which must have seemed a per­fect place to set­tle or just stop for the night.

But beneath the sur­face, lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly, the land is lay­ered with a dif­fer­ent, tougher his­to­ry. It has been a camp for rail­way work­ers and sol­diers, a sale-yard for sheep and cat­tle, a golf course and a sewage treat­ment plant. It is in fact a typ­i­cal edge­lands land­scape: used, abused and degrad­ed, bear­ing the cost of humanity’s baser needs for eat­ing, killing, mov­ing and shit­ting (I’m not quite sure how the golf course fits into this, but bear with me). It now mas­quer­ades as a rus­tic idyll, a sup­pos­ed­ly pub­lic reserve fenced off and leased out to a rid­ing club. The graz­ing is no longer for work­hors­es but for play­hors­es.

Back to the road, where the Halfway is still a place of con­nec­tions. The Porirua Stream is to the left now, hav­ing met the Bel­mont Stream among the pad­docks, and it soon gath­ers rein­force­ment from the Steb­bings Stream down in the gul­ly below. Mid­dle­ton Road swings back towards the low rum­ble of the motor­way, and Westch­ester Dri­ve begins its swoop up the scrub­by hill­side to meet and cross it. There are no foot­paths, so if the vil­lagers of Grena­da want to walk to the Halfway they will have to take their chances with the gorse and the growl­ing traf­fic.

Westch­ester Drive’s younger broth­er (for some rea­son, while cars seem to share the con­ven­tion­alised fem­i­nine gen­der with ships, I can only see roads as mas­cu­line) winds inex­orably down the Steb­bings Stream, gnaw­ing away at the hill­side as it seeks an arte­r­i­al union at this inter­sec­tion. It will link Chur­ton Park, which is still metas­ta­sis­ing across the hill­side in sick­ly tumor­ous shades — Sev­en­ties shit-brown, livid Eight­ies puce, jaun­diced Nineties ochre, the necrot­ic grey pal­lor of the Noughties — down through the trau­ma­tised val­ley and on to the motor­way. Here I am at the inter­sec­tion, for­ev­er the halfway. Nev­er quite a place, but a mark­er between places.