The Great South Road Trip

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XXXXXXXXX A traveller’s tale of journeying Auckland’s most iconic street — Great South Rd — on foot. STORY STEVE BRAUNIAS PHOTOGRAPHY NIC STAVELEY GREAT SOUTH ROADTRIP W HO HAS SET OUT to walk the length of Great South Rd? Anyone living, anyone sane? Auckland’s longest and most important road, an epic stretch of street laid in concrete one foot thick, was first cut out of swamp and bush in 1843. Now, before you have walked more than 10 minutes, you can call in at number 102 to have your head examined in the offices of child and adult psychiatrist Jan Reeves. But I kept on walking. I was as sane and modest as any great explorer. I viewed the road as a river, Auckland’s surging Congo, and I wanted to follow it, walk its banks, as far as I could in a single day. It would take me into the interior, with the grit and grime of Auckland beneath its fingernails; it would take me towards the mooing country, to the ends of Auckland’s earth. Great South Rd begins at the intersection of Manukau Rd in Newmarket. I stood at the corner at five past seven on a Wednesday morning in March. The last of the darkness of night crept away like smoke. I was travelling incognito: no pack, no hat, no map. Geoff Chapple bristles with fancy accessories such as the Leki walking stick whenever he stomps the Te Araroa trail through New Zealand. That other famous pedestrian A.H. Reed, author of numerous books documenting his long walks, was a country rambler. I dressed like a man who was popping around the corner for bread and milk. The only way forward was south. South, through the brown, unvisited suburbs of Penrose, Otahuhu, Papatoetoe, Manukau and Manurewa. South, past horsey Takinini and Papakura. South, alongside the tilled fields of Runciman and Ramarama. Great South Rd putters out, finally, to the west of Bombay. (Bits and pieces of it, like broken crockery, are scattered further south in the Waikato lowlands.) Bombay was a hill too far at a distance of about 40kms. I aimed to get to the train station at Papakura — a mere 26.9kms, or five hours and 34 minutes, going by the Google Maps calculation that it takes 20 minutes to walk one kilometre. I walk faster than that. By setting off at 7.05am, I’d be at Papakura in time for lunch. But I wanted to stop and chat. I was walking, not competing. The company of strangers was also the very best way of getting to know where I was, because people and their stories define maps. So does history. I was walking into the past: Great South Rd was made great in the 1860s, when Governor George Grey expanded it to move troops from Auckland to invade the Waikato and smash the Maori resistance. In the TV series The New Zealand Wars, presenter and historian James Belich described the road as the centrepiece of Grey’s military strategy, and said: “It pointed like a giant sword at the heart of the Maori King movement.” Great South Rd is the road to war. I came in peace. I was simply going for a 26.9km stroll. RIGHT FROM THE start I was mocked, made to feel like a tramp by the gleaming showrooms for Maserati, BMW, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz and Rolls-Royce. Here was the dream of Auckland, its wealth and URBAN ADVENTURE

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Steve Braunias journeys down Auckland's most iconic street - Great South Rd - on foot.

Transcript of The Great South Road Trip

Page 1: The Great South Road Trip

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A traveller’s tale of journeying Auckland’s most iconic street — Great South Rd — on foot.STORY STEVE BRAUNIAS PHOTOGRAPHY NIC STAVELEY

GREAT SOUTH ROADTRIPW

HO HAS SET OUT to walk the length of Great South Rd? Anyone living, anyone sane? Auckland’s longest and most important road, an epic stretch of street

laid in concrete one foot thick, was first cut out of swamp and bush in 1843. Now, before you have walked more than 10 minutes, you can call in at number 102 to have your head examined in the offices of child and

adult psychiatrist Jan Reeves. But I kept on walking.

I was as sane and modest as any great explorer. I viewed the road as a river, Auckland’s surging Congo, and I wanted to follow it, walk its banks, as far as I could in a single day. It would take me into the interior, with the grit and grime of Auckland beneath its fingernails; it would take me towards the mooing country, to the ends of Auckland’s earth.

Great South Rd begins at the intersection of Manukau Rd in Newmarket. I stood at the corner at five past seven on a Wednesday morning in March. The last of the darkness of night crept away like smoke. I was travelling incognito: no pack, no hat, no map. Geoff Chapple bristles with fancy accessories such as the Leki walking stick whenever he stomps the Te Araroa trail through New Zealand. That other famous pedestrian A.H. Reed, author of numerous books documenting his

long walks, was a country rambler. I dressed like a man who was popping around the corner for bread and milk.

The only way forward was south. South, through the brown, unvisited suburbs of Penrose, Otahuhu, Papatoetoe, Manukau and Manurewa. South, past horsey Takinini and Papakura. South, alongside the tilled fields of Runciman and Ramarama. Great South Rd putters out, finally, to the west of Bombay. (Bits and pieces of it, like broken crockery, are scattered further south in the Waikato lowlands.) Bombay was a hill too far at a distance of about 40kms. I aimed to get to the train station at Papakura — a

mere 26.9kms, or five hours and 34 minutes, going by the Google Maps calculation that it takes 20 minutes to walk one kilometre.

I walk faster than that. By setting off at 7.05am, I’d be at Papakura in time for lunch. But I wanted to stop and chat. I was walking, not competing. The company of strangers was also the very best way of getting to know where I was, because people and their stories define maps.

So does history. I was walking into the past: Great South Rd was made great in the 1860s, when Governor George Grey expanded it to move troops from Auckland to invade the Waikato and smash the Maori

resistance. In the TV series The New Zealand Wars, presenter and historian James Belich described the road as the centrepiece of Grey’s military strategy, and said: “It pointed like a giant sword at the heart of the Maori King movement.” Great South Rd is the road to war.

I came in peace. I was simply going for a 26.9km stroll.

RIGHT FROM THE start I was mocked, made to feel like a tramp by the gleaming showrooms for Maserati, BMW, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz and Rolls-Royce. Here was the dream of Auckland, its wealth and

URbAn AdvEnTURE

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wonderful,” said Roland, a little old man who wore a check shirt and a neck brace. “We can’t keep up with it. Ten years ago if you said you wanted razor wire, you’d be run out of town. Now everyone wants it. People are desperate for security.”

He took his brace off because of the heat inside the hut. He said he wore it since a head-on collision with a truck in 1978. Then he said: “My first wife was murdered in Zimbabwe.” Then he talked about crime running rampant where he lived now, on St Stephens Ave in Parnell. He counted six cars one morning which had been broken into. “Key, his house is on St Stephens Ave, but he wouldn’t know a bloody thing about it. Walking disaster. Idiot. But they love him. Wake up, New Zealand!”

There were gates and buzzers and many, many weapons at the next premises I visited, at number 553: gun shop Small Arms International. Stewart Ogg, trim and taut at 52, sat in his office. Even his

status. Here were the lovely grounds and stately buildings of Dilworth School. Here was the electoral office of National MP Paul Goldsmith. The sight of his fatuous grinning face put a spring in my step.

The traffic was light. The day dawned white with low cloud. The road rose, and there was a view of furthest south — a long, blue line of distant ranges, beautiful in a haze of golden light. I thought: that’s where I’m going. I was happy, a traveller of the road, able to stop and admire the sign outside the Royal Park Lodge motel at number 159: SPA AND DREAM STAY SUITES. I love Asian manglings of English, and called in on motel owner Danny Wan. Small, vague, 41, he was ironing pillowcases. He said he arrived from Taiwan in 2008. But when I congratulated him on the sign, he said it was written by the previous manager, a New Zealander.

Around the corner, at Sierra Cafe at number 167, Garry Fissenden was enjoying his usual breakfast: two bottles of Coke

I wAS HAPPy, A TRAvEllER On THE ROAD, AblE TO STOP AnD ADmIRE THE SIGn: “SPA AnD DREAm STAy SUITES”.

Dee Clothier at Anytime Fitness, 251 Great South Rd, Greenlane.

moustache looked tough. He gave a guided tour of two crucial events in the history of Great South Rd.

The shop used to be a bank; inside the old safe, with its walls and door a foot thick of solid metal, were valuable guns. They included an antique musket, a three-band Snider, which had been used in the New Zealand Wars. Strange to inspect this fuming instrument of death on the very road that was built so it could be used to kill Maori.

Among the other guns was an elegant black .45. There was a note beside it. It read: “Greg’s. Not For Sale.” Ogg said, “That’s the gun that shot the Maori with the machete.”

On July 27, 2006, Ricky Beckham entered the shop with a machete, waved it around, and screamed: “I’ll kill you!” Greg Carvell shot him in the stomach. There was a bullet hole in glass beside Ogg’s desk. Police arrested Carvell for the shooting, then dropped the charges; Beckham was sentenced to jail for two years for aggravated robbery. His lawyer claimed that Beckham intended to scare Carvell out, sit down with a beer, look at photographs of his son, and kill himself.

Ogg acted out the parts — the machete attack (Beckham was left-handed), the gun pointed low to bring Beckham down but not to kill him. He was light on his feet, all his movements were fast and emphatic; he said he was a martial arts instructor with a dojo at his Torbay home. “Dojo actually means a place to study Buddhism… Yeah, I’m a Buddhist monk.”

His father was a psychiatrist; one of his brothers was a vascular surgeon; Stewart said things like, “I have an expert opinion of what pain is.” He talked about something called the wrist-twist, and another move which involves a percussion slap on the back of the neck. “It’s like an electric shock.Want to feel it?” I stood up, and he gave me a lesson in pain.

Zero. Round and cheerful, the CEO of an electrician training company, he lives in St Heliers but does his best to attend a gathering at Sierra every Wednesday morning. Once a week for the past 13 years, eight couples have met at a cafe after dropping their daughters off at Dio. Garry’s wife Sherron arrived, and said, “It started as a girls’ coffee club, but the dads weasled their way in somehow.” Garry smiled, and took another swig of his black fizz.

The unlovely mangled English of Corinthians — OTHER FOUNDATION CAN NO MAN LAY THAN THAT IS LAID WHICH IS JESUS CHRIST — was inscribed on the foundation stone of the Greenlane Presbyterian Church at number 211. Dated November 3, 1956, it was among the most ancient buildings on this stretch of motels, cafes, office blocks and gyms. Former bodybuilder Dee Clothier, tall and lean, 52, a personal trainer with Anytime Fitness at number 251, was enjoying her usual breakfast: a shake of protein powder with fresh banana and frozen raspberries. “Normally I put spinach in,” she said.

South, and again the road rose, with an even grander view of the blue hills beneath a golden tint; the traffic had got thicker, and the driver of a white van clocked up an instant $150 fine when Auckland Council traffic enforcement officer 1097 (“We don’t have names,” he said) filmed him tearing into the bus lane. Auckland’s dream of wealth and status was already fading, replaced by immigrant needs. Here was the Chinese Embassy. Here was the New Zealand College of Chinese Medicine Affiliated With Zhejiang Chinese Medical University. Here was the Lily Fong Ballet Academy, upstairs at number 407; it was next to the office of a Chinese tax accountant.

He had the whole building to himself in the daytime. He was squeezed in a small corner. “I’m so busy!” he wailed, and returned to his figures. Downstairs was completely empty, abandoned, an expanse of dusty blue carpet.

I sat on the front steps. Someone had planted a nice row of fat little succulents and set them in a garden of bright white seashells. Someone, a long time ago, had planted something else: a peach tree. It hung over the next-door fence. Bruised fruit had fallen in front of desolate 407. The peaches of Great South Rd were so delicious, the best I ate all summer.

WHEn dId I PASS from Greenlane into Penrose? It was subtle and unannounced, but suddenly all was older, rustier, full of long low factories and corrugated iron roofs, a zone of tenaciousness and manly enterprise. You could buy mannequins, trampolines, forklifts. In the front yard of fence and gate suppliers Tube Industries at number 503, Mukesh Garg and Roland Beuth worked inside a cramped hut.

“The crime scene in New Zealand is

“THE cRImE ScEnE In nEw zEAlAnD IS wOnDERfUl,” SAID ROlAnD, A lITTlE OlD mAn wHO wORE A cHEck SHIRT AnD A nEck bRAcE.

Stewart Ogg at Small Arms International, 553 Great South Rd, Penrose.

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IT WAS AbOUT 11am. The cloud had burned off. The day was bright with sunlight and the traffic was going mad, thick and loud, all the vans and trucks and flat-bed jalopies of Auckland carting stuff up and down Great South Rd. But there was expensive and possibly beautiful art beneath the ground.

I stopped in at Fletcher House at number 581 because I remembered reading they bought and displayed New Zealand art. There was a Shane Cotton painting in the foyer. It was the usual Cotton — vast, dense, second-rate. But the receptionist said there was a tunnel that went to another Fletcher building on the other side of the street, and it was packed with a variety of New Zealand paintings curated by Peter Shaw. What a sensational idea. I took three wrapped toffees from a bowl, and sauntered on, thrilled at the notion of an underground art gallery on Great South Rd.

I hadn’t gone very far before I came across something completely, stunningly beautiful, and above ground — Mutukaroa Regional Park, or Hamlin’s Hill, 48 hectares of meadow and replanted native bush. The motorway roared past its east bank. “Auckland’s largest traffic island,” as Scott Hamilton describes Mutukaroa; it features among the 20 sites that Hamilton and film-maker Paul Janman want to film in their audacious documentary proposal, 20 Steps Down Great South Road — an entire series devoted to the psychogeography and “rich, confused history” of Great South Rd. Their ideas are sketched out on Hamilton’s excellent blog, Reading the Maps.

Bob and Cheryl Lawton were up on Hamlin’s Hill, doing their best to cut back long grass. They were volunteers; they live in Panmure, and come when they can, working two hours at a stretch. Bob said he once saw yellow buntings. It was lovely and fresh in the hot sun; there were crowds of

welcome swallows, and white-faced herons described arcs in the sky.

Soon I came to another Great South Rd pastoral — Mt Richmond Domain, where an enormous Moreton Bay fig tree dropped its coconut-smelling fruit onto the pavement. There was a rugby boot tied by its laces to power lines. A track led behind the premises of a car club — it has a bar, and an incredible, almost psychedelic painting of an orange sports car — to a pretty hill. Sunshine warmed and yellowed the grass. It smelled like summer. I lay back, and chewed toffees.

Around the bend, Otahahu began; there was an abandoned car yard, a finance lender with its sign appealing to BENEFICIARIES WITH BAD CREDIT; a short, dazed Maori with tattoos around his neck came out of a dairy, stared at the traffic with his mouth wide open, and then walked upstairs to his cell in the Great South Lodge.

bUT OTAHUHU WAS also palm trees and a vibrant shopping centre — pink taro $3.49 and cone taro $2.39, big feet and big pants. It was Ronnie’s Shoes (WE SPECIALISE IN EXTRA LARGE SIZES) and Big Man Clothing. It was PI, and it had a tremendous sense of fun and spirit. It was youth mentor Doreen Alefosio, 22, in her office at Affirming Works at number 225, which also operates as a community cafe. “We work with kids who aren’t at risk, but are borderline,” she said. “We encourage them to broaden their horizons beyond south Auckland.”

But she’d never left south Auckland. “No!” she said, and laughed. Her parents came over from Samoa, and her dad worked at the Tip-Top factory; she was born in Mangere, and now lived at home in Manurewa. She said: “This is home. Southside.”

There were a lot of Dollar Shops and a lot of barbers. I called in at Fale Otiulu, the barbershop at number 377, for a trim. Tuia Mauga said he’d cleaned the airport on the night-shift — 11pm to 8am — for seven years before opening his shop. There was a photograph of him in front of the big mirror. It was taken when he was 27 and the best man at his brother’s wedding. He wore a tuxedo and a lush mane of hair. Now he was 62 and his bare head shone like glass.

Samoans, Tongans, Chinese; and at the furthest end of the shops, a Maori. Cathy Lim’s famous cafe, the Hangi Shop at number 583, was beside a local landmark — a World War I statue of a man on a horse, next to a memorial for “the brave men who served their Queen and country in the Maori War”. The past was outside, Great South Rd paved to spill blood; the present was inside, where Cathy served porkbone and watercress boil-ups, rewena bread, and hangi with meat, pumpkin, kumara, cabbage, carrots, beetroot and turnips. “I grew up loving food,” she said.

She was the youngest of 10, half-Maori,

half-Chinese, growing up in a market garden at Pukekohoe. “Parsnips is where dad made his name and his money. It’s a hard vegetable to grow; it has a poisonous sap that can burn your skin — look,” she said, and rolled up her sleeve. “I still have scars.”

It was getting onto 3pm. I was refuelled by Cathy’s steamed pudding, and inspired by her story about another Great South Rd walker — an old Chinese woman, whom Cathy saw recently pushing a supermarket trolley with a set of drawers in it. The woman walked from Otahuhu to Manukau.

I saw Manhar Patel sitting on the front steps of his unit in a kind of row of barracks at number 679. He was only 54, but looked decrepit; there were black hollows carved beneath his eyes, his mouth was thin and bitter. He arrived in Auckland with his wife in 2008. Their son, an engineer, flew them over, but he left last year for a better

job in Australia. “We have no relatives, no friends,” said

Manhar. “All the time staying at home. Watch Shortland Street. New Zealand is good country. But no job, why you live here?” He wore a faded pink T-shirt. It mocked him; it read, COOL GUY.

The barracks were next to the Tamaki River. Two Chinese men were fishing, and had filled half a bucket with twitching mullet. The brown water stirred, and up popped a shag, large and sleek and glistening. Afternoon rush-hour sent up wads of exhaust smoke; the sky darkened, and I walked past the massive DB Breweries factory and into Papatoetoe. There were grand houses with chipped fountains, trees and flowers.

At number 32 — the numbers started again with each new suburb, and there were about a thousand addresses per suburb — Mii Pepe was sitting on his front steps. He was 37. His life ended when he was 21.

OTAHUHU wAS PAlm TREES AnD A vIbRAnT SHOPPInG cEnTRE — PInk TARO, bIG fEET AnD bIG PAnTS.

THE Sky DARkEnED, AnD I wAlkED InTO PAPATOETOE. THERE wERE GRAnD HOUSES wITH cHIPPED fOUnTAInS, TREES AnD flOwERS.

Cathy Lim at the Hangi Shop, 583 Great South Rd, Otahuhu.

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In 1995, in Rarotonga, he was climbing up a waterfall but lost his footing, and fell. He was flown to New Zealand for emergency surgery, and stayed: he was paralysed from the hip down.

He wore a singlet. His upper body was strong, athletic; he’s an Auckland rep at wheelchair basketball, and will try out for the national team. He said, “Oh man, New Zealand’s the best! Good food, and you get the benefit, not like fucken Raro.” There was a scar on his forehead. “Oh, that. I fell off a bridge once.”

SOUTH, PAST THE St John’s cemetery, where a headless angel soared above the remains of Charles Hugh Lushington. “Educated at Eton College.” Died 1907. And then, with unfortunate wording: “Regretted by all who knew him.”

South, through the Hunter’s Corner shops in Papatoetoe, patrolled by six ludicrous “town centre ambassadors”, employed by

the business association to plod up and down a couple of blocks on Great South Rd and keep an eye on drunks and prostitutes. “We do Section One, from the lights to Video Ezy,” said Eve Rhind, 47, a tough little Maori with a military haircut. The ambassadors travelled in pairs. Eve had to put up with the company of a creepy, patronising Iranian.

South, past VIP Curries, advertising goat curry; south, past Allenby Park (“Please Do Not Feed The Birds”); south, past the St Addai Catholic Church, where a statue of Mary was protected by a security fence — no razor wire, yet. The warm afternoon had cooled. It started to rain. I took shelter at the Alamo Sports Bar. Janine Ward, 38, was drinking with her parents, who had come to visit from Wainuiomata. “This is my local for nine years, my husband’s for 15,” she said.

She talked about her car, a V8 Club Sport (“I’m a Holden girl through and through”), and her love of horse-racing and dogs. The tattoo on her wrist read: RIP SYD. “He was six months old when my neighbour’s dog killed him. He dug a hole under the fence and went next door. Syd was a pug; he wanted to play. The neighbour’s dog is a pitbull. It pretty much ripped Syd’s head off.” She laid a police complaint, but got nowhere. Did the neighbours ever apologise? “No. We don’t speak.”

The rain eased. It was 5.30pm. Sitting at the bar was a mistake; my legs felt heavy when I stood up. But I had to get cracking. It wasn’t a walk, I was competing to get to Papakura. Planes flew overhead. I’d breathed in enough petrol and diesel to power a 747.

I legged it without pause or joy through Manukau and then climbed for nearly an hour to Manurewa.

I got to the shops. A young Indian man loitered in the doorway of a business, and said, “Do you want to have fun?”

I asked what he had in mind. “Come upstairs,” he said, and took a step backwards. He was nervous, breathy, strange.

No, I said, tell me here. He said: “Man on man fun.” No, I said. He said: “I’ve never tried it! I was just curious…”

Karaoke was blaring out of Woody’s Bar. A Chinese drycleaner slaved over a suit. Something called Chinese Manchurian was on the menu at a curry restaurant. A homeless man walked into a park. Two blocks past the shops, it rained again, heavily. I stepped inside a bus shelter. Through the downpour, I could see up the hill and around a corner: there were the ranges I had seen that morning, close and dark. I looked at my watch. It was 7.05pm. Twelve hours south, on foot; Papakura was another 90 minutes’ tramp; rain, evening, an uphill slog; I’d walked 20.6kms. I was happy, a little crazed with tiredness. What was another hour or two? I got on the next bus. It drove north.

A yOUnG InDIAn mAn lOITERED In THE DOORwAy, AnD SAID, “DO yOU wAnT TO HAvE fUn?”

Tuia Mauga at Fale Otiulu, 377 Great South Rd, Otahuhu.At right: Otahuhu town centre.