The former ‘Pride of Cherbourg’ carried me through the Sounds, across Cook Straight to Wellington, my birth place where, thanks to a three hour ferry delay, I arrived in the evening to be met by old friend from Fiji days, Derek Robinson, who, with his wife, Rosemary, lives in Paramata, a dormitory suburb north of the city on the Kapiti Coast. Fifty years ago the places along this coast were starting to make the transition from beach villages to dormitory suburbs. Now their expansion into full scale suburban townships is complete, and every work day thousands of Kapiti Coast dwellers make their way to and from the CBD in the excellent electrified train service which now runs as far as Waikanae, about sixty kms north of the city.
The next day, Sunday, I followed their example, when I set out on a balmy
late autumn/early winter day to explore the docks development and the Te Papa
museum in Wellington. In my
childhood, the dock area was strictly functional and not a place for recreation. Since then, much of it has been
converted into a promenade, buildings have been repurposed, rebuilt or newly
constructed, and on a sunny Sunday it is an attraction for genteel strolling,
cycling, skating, roller blading, or just sitting and watching the passing
scene from one of the many bars and restaurants.
One of the main atractions is the Te Papa (‘Our Place’) museum,
established by act of Parliament in 1992, and bringing together the holdings of
several national museums and galleries.
The main building, designed by a NZ architectural practice, cost $NZ300
million when it was opened in 1998, and Te Papa attracts over a million visits
a year. I had been encouraged to
join in the enthusiasm aroused by this splendid enterprise, and, indeed, it is
impossible not to be impressed by the scope and scale ot its exhibits, and the
variety of ways of engaging visitors. However, I was disappointed with the premises, which
seemed to consist of an incoherent set of structures, while after several hours
visiting the extensive range of galleries, I was left with a slightly uneasy
feeling: what was the hidden ideology?
A couple of days later I met Bernie Kernot, a now retired academic who was a
fellow student at Auckland University, where we studied anthropology in the late 50s-early
60s. When I expressed my
puzzlement over Te Papa, he confirmed his own, saying that it seemed to represent a post modern supermarket
approach to museums, visitors picking and mixing ideas as they wished. He questioned the absence of an
authoritative guide to content implied by such an approach. I said that the underlying theme that I
took from the Te Papa supermarket was that of identity, particularly the
identity of NZ as a Pacific island nation, and although the presence and
influence of the ethnic European – or pakeha
– population was acknowledged, the emphasis seemed to be less on their
contribution to the development, way of life and identity of the nation than on
that of Maori, other Pacific islanders and Asians. In what sense is the museum truly ‘our place’ when the
presence of the majority population appeared to be so under represented?
To be fair, a temporary exhibition on level six did represent a small
slice of the material culture of the pakeha in the form of a collection of
British and European ceramics, metalwork and glassware assembled between 1990
and 1965 by Wellingtonian, Walter
Cook. With a keen eye for design
and provenance, Cook built up his collection locally, and the exhibition
explained the role of several Wellington shops, among them the now defunct
James Smiths department store, in introducing new styles to the Wellington
consumer. Outraged by Thatcherite
government policy in the early 1990s,
Walter Cook gave his collection to the museum for the benefit of future
generations, and in its modest way, this exhibition seemed to me to contribute
to filling a significant gap on the shelves of the Te Papa supermarket.
The theme of identity, so prevelant in Te Papa, continued in the cityscape
itself where it became entwined with that of memory and recall. We are, in no small part, what we
remember, and my earliest memories are of Wellington, where I lived until the
age of ten. My visits to the
city during this brief stay became a kind of quest to identify the buildings
which would have been present during my childhood. This little project had been sparked off when I first
arrived at Wellington station that Sunday morning. It was obvious from the railways in the South Island that,
notwithstanding the de luxe tourist trains, there had been under investment in
the rail system, so I was prepared to find the splendid Wellington railway
station in a state of neglect or even, like Grand Central Station in New York,
destroyed. Fortunately, quite the reverse seemed to be true: it was clearly a
cherished and much used terminus, containing a very smart supermarket for the
benefit of commuters which, with a change of logo from NW to M&S, could
have been mistaken for a branch Simply Food.
Outside, the statue of Gandhi still strides towards the future, while
across the road, the art deco Hotel Waterloo, now repurposed as a backpackers
hostel, had been given a slap up coat of paint highlighting its art deco
features. And with the hotel’s
style I had discovered a theme: art deco. As a child, I was unaware of the significance of this
dash of modernity in some of Welllington’s buildings, but as I now moved around
the city identifying places familiar from my childhood, I realized that many of
these buildings were art deco, a style which, like the Victorian, had been
eclipsed in the early post-war period, but which is now sought after. In NZ, the city of Napier has
cornered the art deco market, and is a place of pilgrimage for art deco
enthusiasts. However, as become obvious, Wellington has a considerable share of
art deco architecture and maybe some enterprising individual will devise an art
deco trail of the city.
For the time being, native son film director Peter Jackson, who was born and raised on the Kapiti
Coast, has set a lead by refurbishing the Roxy cinema in the otherwise
unremarkable suburb of Miramar, where the Weta Workshop of ‘Lord of the Rings’
fame is also located. In fact, as
I was to discover when meeting Bernie for lunch at the Brooklyn cinema where I
used to go to Saturday matinees as a kid, another art deco cinema is now, like
the Roxy, enjoying a new lease of
life, if not in quite the technicolour splendour to be found in its
Miramar counterpart.
Wellington is built on a major geological fault, and until relatively
recently, there was a height ceiling on buildings, so that none of the ones that I could identify from my
childhood stand at more than six to eight floors, which was then considered
‘high’. This limit is now
being flouted big time, with the CBD, which is largely located on reclaimed
land, now being dominated by high rise office blocks and apartments, including
a very dreary structure near the railway station, for which Victoria University
should be ashamed. While the
wisdom of such development in an earthquake zone can be questioned, what is
even more questionable is the
aesthetic effect. Formerly a low
rise city with a some architectural unity, Wellington has now become an urban
place more or less like those found anywhere else, while the older buildings,
mostly repainted and repurposed,
now cower under or are reflected in a jungle of high rise towers. Furthermore, whereas in the past, there
was some sense of propriety in the scale, style and relationship of buildings,
today anything goes, and the cityscape is now an incoherent muddle consisting
of mostly conventional and mediocre new high rise buildings and older
structures repurposed or awkwardly incorporated into a new one . Even a
building whose form might match its status and function may instead express the
fanciful ideas of the architect and client, as is the case with the Supreme
Court building, to be seen in the background of the new graduates in a later
photograh. This low rise structure is enclosed in a curious cage, which, who
knows, may be an architectural metaphor for the intricacies of legal process.
Whatever the intention, form doth not reflect function.
Sometimes an existing building is preserved, either as a shell to front a
new one, or it is retained unchanged while a new high rise is added to it. The Kirkcaldy and Staines (‘Kirkcaldies’)
deparment store, the country’s oldest, being in business since 1863, is one
such example. In earlier times,
some of Walter Roberts’ Te Papa collection may have passed across its counters
to their original owners, probably one of the Kelburn ladies in hats and gloves
who were among Kirkaldies clientele .
Following a recommendation by my hosts, I spent part of one morning doing
a tour of the Parliament buildings, where I was one of a small group making up
the first tour of the day: a middle aged couple from Auckland, a couple from
China, and another couple originally from Mongolia but now citizens of
Australia. As it happened, it had
not proved possible to ignore NZ politics from virtually the moment of my arrival
in the country because, for the first week or so of my visit, the news was dominated by what passed
for a political scandal. Aaron
Gilmore, a National Party MP from a South Island
constituency, had, it was
reported, pulled rank as well as insulted a waiter by calling him a dickhead
when a guest and in his cups at the Hamner Springs hotel. As always with such scandals, various
versions of the incident were reported and mulled over, while the hapless MP
(who does seem to have been a bit of a prat) was ruthlessly pursued by the
persistent representatives of the media as he attempted to go about his job as
MP. Eventually, he fell on his
sword. For a visitor from the UK
there were some strking parallels with the ‘Plebgate’ incident.
Given the nature of NZ politics and the voting system, a ruling party is
often dependent on garnering support from minority parties to form a government
or to pass legislation, so the loss of an MP while a bill is in progress
through the house can be quite serious.
At the time, the government was attempting to pass contentious
legislation which would confirm or even extend the government’s powers of
surveillance, so even a minor scandal and the loss of an MP were unwanted by
and uncomfortable for the smooth talking PM and his cabinet, whose other
priority was passing a budget.
New Zealand has a unicameral parliament which, since 1996 has
been based on Mixed-member Proportional Representation (MMP). Seventy MPs are
elected directly in electorate seats and the remainder are filled by ‘ list’ MPs based on each party's
share of the party vote, making a total of 120 MPs (population 2010 4.3
million). For comparison, there are 650 MPs in the UK parliament (population 2010
61.9 million). Not surprisingly,
the debating chamber is quite intimate compared with the one at Westminster,
and actually visiting it put into context the widely viewed final reading of the
Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill (otherwise known as Same Sex
Marriage) in April of this year, when people in the crowded public gallery
above and around the chamber burst into Pokarekare
Ana , a traditional NZ love song, on the confirmation of the vote, while a
woman MP sporting spectacular millinery distributed bouquets to the MPs
associated with the sponsorship and passing of the legislation. Although NZ isn't the first country to
pass such legislation, it has always been in the vanguard of political innovation,
to which the Electoral Act of 1893 is a testament. It made NZ the first country
in the world to give women the vote, although it was to be another century
before one would become PM.
New Zealand’s 20th century adoption of MMP meant
that when, in the 2010 UK election, the outcome led to setting up a coalition government, there were hasty visits to New Zealand by, among others, Sir Gus O’Donnell,
the Cabinet Secretary and highest official in the British civil service, in
order to find out how coalition government worked in another Westminster
system. Our tour guide was pleased
when I mentioned this, although he wouldn't concede that New Zealand’s three
year parliamentary term was too brief: ‘we can get rid of them if we don't like
them’ was his response. Maybe, but I couldn't help but wonder what the dual
effects of MMP and such a short parliamentary term might have on the way the
country is governed.
On leaving the parliamentary complex, I ran into lots of
young people in caps and gowns waiting to attend their graduation ceremony in
the building opposite – reputedly the largest wooden building in the Southern
hemisphere. New university
graduates, not a few of them Asian, and their parents seemed to be everywhere
over the next few days. Education
is a big industry in NZ, and while students have been recruited from Asia for
generations, they have been recruited in very significant numbers over the past
decade or so. Some of them don't
return home, but remain in NZ, adding to the Asianization of the country’s
population, as would also be discovered in my next stop: Palmerston North
http://www.flickr.com/photos/75004468@N08/sets/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/75004468@N08/sets/
No comments:
Post a Comment