Saturday 16 December 2017

They call it the City of Sails – boat ownership is higher per capita than anywhere else in the world – but draw lines on the map from the coasts – north to south, east to west – and those lines intersect on my kitchen table.

I see a lot more cars than watercraft.

I was surprised to actually get a park just along from the ASB Waterfront Theatre.

Sails are rarely seen on the Manukau Harbour – in that harbour there are no beaches, mostly mud, they pipe the city’s shit out there beside the sacred river at Otuataua, the people are Polynesians in state houses – Polynesians: the greatest seafarers and navigators that history has witnessed.

Here on the Waitemata Harbour – rich tossers’ sleek white craft are moored. Heading up the gangplank: ‘How was it last night, debaucherous?’ ‘ … threw it in your face?’ ‘ … jumped off the balcony’.

Further around – Fullers ferries to Waiheke, a man playing the bagpipes.

And at last, at Queens Wharf – AIDAcara: registered in Genoa, gross tonnage: 38,531, a capacity of 1,186 passengers with 360 crew. This explains the unusual percentage of wrinkled Caucasians in pairs on the waterfront today. The Waste Management Oil Recovery tanker is pulled up on the dock beside the ship.

The crowds thin as one proceeds east past Admiralty Steps to Marsden Wharf. Huge red iron fences with ornate gates keep people from the water’s edge with overstated Victorian hauteur. Thirteen strands of electrified wire above the iron spikes indicate that even today the golden rule prevails – those with the gold rule.

At Marsden Wharf is berthed NOCC Atlantic, a giant object with all the grace and elegance and curvilinear art nouveau detail and decoration of a concrete block. Trucks rumble into its cavernous rear end.

Beyond the NOCC Atlantic is a small rock that is the place that on 18 September 1840 Ngati Whatua chief, Apihai Te Kawau, granted land to some visiting folks from across the ocean. Himalayan blunder!

I stomp on further along Quay Street. ‘Let the World be Nuclear-free’ the mosaic exhorts from the spot where French agents murdered Fernando Pereira.

I am almost at the Spark Arena, halfway between Storage Shed One and Storage Shed Two, while astonishing, yellow, War-of-the-Worlds machines roll about tossing shipping containers around before I realise that I am not going to be able to get any closer to the sea. I can glimpse, beyond the buildings, an orange ship with a black funnel with two pale blue stripes.

I turn and head back. I saw three ships.


Barnaby McBryde