Safety in numbers – or fear of the mob? © 2008 Duncan Graham
Is there a transport system anywhere in the world more efficient than Indonesia’s?
Sure it’s shambolic, uncomfortable and unsafe. But it’s also cheap, flexible and ever-present.
Getting to work in Malang is a breeze; no need to study timetables and ransack the piggy bank for the fare as in New Zealand. The bald-tired bemo (minibus) will be waiting ready to zip from end to end of the city for Rp 2,000 (US 20 cents)
Don’t run – he’ll wait, unless he has double the legal load. Another will be along in two ticks. Bending a bule (Westerner) frame into a hairpin to get through the door while watching the wallet, squeezing a 40 cm bottom into a 20 cm bench space, snagging nails on rusting rails and sucking carcinogens from motorbikes and Marlboros are the downsides.
The service is almost door-to-door. Just a short stride to the job. It’s past Klojen market with hazards to negotiate, though no problem given the right attitude.
First are the ranks of becaks (pedicabs), every driver bemused why a foreigner would prefer to walk. The real titanium-torso wrinklies (as opposed to those 70 years young despite their tough trade) sing out in antique Dutch. For them, all bule come from the Netherlands.
Then the butcher slashing and chopping at a window in a wall hung with hands of bananas, all prices negotiable; you’d be silly to pay above Rp 5,000 (US 50 cents) for two kilos of the freshest, sweetest fruit this side of the equator.
A harridan with a bloke’s biceps bullies undecided customers while hacking the twitching meat on a counter with more flies than an Australian sheep station. For ox shanks she uses half a tree trunk, its splintered anvil stuffed with fat and bone chips, probably going back to the Majapahit era. The site is an archaeologist’s challenge – and a health inspector’s.
White-eyed beggars flash their cataracts for aluminium coins. A local clinic not three minutes distant will fix their blindness for Rp 7 million (US $ 760) an eye. NZ charities invite $ 25 donations so one poor Asian can see with the skills volunteered by Western surgeons.
A pregnant too-young teen polishes plastic bottles of water to make them more appealing; acrid smoke spits off a tyre clamp as a man squats to repair a puncture. His mate offers battered and blunt hand tools for sale, tradesmen’s discards.
In the next 100 metres the smell of crushed coffee from beans grown on nearby volcanic slopes competes with the gagging stench of rotting rubbish. This is raked into carts by the yellow-clad sanitary squad scattering black plastic into the breeze. An exhibitionist pisses against a wall under graffiti warning against such behavior because it’s alongside a school.
The kids pay no attention. They’re besieging food carts selling fried bananas, steamed peanuts, frozen colored water and anything that will clog arteries, lift blood pressure and quicken heartbeats.
But then so does running this gauntlet of humanity, maybe 1,000 strong. There are no human threats – many participants in the Klojen kaleidoscope are friendly, acknowledging the curious stranger, the bewildered bule. The rest are indifferent, preoccupied with survival.
And in Indonesia that means being with people who say: Mangan ora mangan, asal ngumpul – we may have nothing to eat but we have each other.
In Wellington, where we’ve been for the past few months, the tidy streets are briefly full only during commuters’ rush hours. Even then the traffic is orderly, disciplined, soon to vanish behind closed doors. Westerners like it that way – Indonesians do not.
This is an issue that can turn multicultural marital relationships into a martial arts contest. I want to be alone – she wants crowds. The bubbling hubbub of life in Indonesia, its rollicking racket is meat and drink to my beloved.
I’d rather read a book looking for knowledge – she’d sooner seek a crowd and glean their wisdom.
Indonesians see safety in numbers – Westerners fear the crowd; it might be a mob.
Not in Klojen. This is a snapshot of everyday – work and idleness, pain and hope, resignation and reward. It’s well worth the walk. The same emotions and experiences flourish in Wellington, though you’d never know. They’re not on public display.
(First published in The Sunday Post 18 May 08)
##
FAITH IN INDONESIA
The shape of the world a generation from now will be influenced far more by how we communicate the values of our society to others than by military or diplomatic superiority. William Fulbright, 1964
Showing posts with label Wellington NZ. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wellington NZ. Show all posts
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Thursday, May 01, 2008
JOKO SUSILO
Puppet diplomat charms Kiwis (c) Duncan Graham 2008
Dr Joko Susilo is a bit of a cheeky lad.
At a big event in the South Australian capital of Adelaide last year, the Indonesian dhalang (shadow puppet master) took a shot at monolingual Australia; he knew the then opposition leader Kevin Rudd was in the audience and that academics and linguists were lobbying for improved language teaching.
Susilo suddenly stopped his Indonesian commentary to announce: “This is John Howard country – I must only speak English here!”
His aside delighted the 1,000 strong audience unconcerned about an outsider commenting on local politics. And in Jakarta it may well have brought an approving nod from his more famous namesake Djoko Susilo, the outspoken and influential nationalist Indonesian politician who loves baiting Australia.
Susilo, the musician plays it close to the line but he does so with style. Certainly he’s well-placed to poke fun at the West. He married New Zealander Kathryn Knox and has fathered two Kiwis who are now teenagers. He has permanent resident status and lives in Dunedin on NZ’s South Island where he makes a living teaching Indonesian arts and working as a dhalang.
He has a doctorate in ethnomusicology and has been absent from his home in Mojopuro in Central Java long enough to know what appeals to foreigners.
Stints in Australia, England, Scotland (where he was an artist in residence at Glasgow University), Holland and the United States where he’s held visiting lectureships, have helped sharpen Susilo’s communication skills.
When you’re a little brown man with a quirky accent from a curious land far away it helps having a jokey relationship with the audience to transmit complex messages about Indonesian history and culture. Particularly to those whose only knowledge of the archipelago have been gleanings from tabloid headlines about bad, sad and mad events.
Handling this category needs care and charm. Fortunately the bubbly Susilo has these qualities in spades.
His repertoire includes hands-on interaction with the public, handing out the perfectly perforated multi-colored puppets made of buffalo hide. He lets little kids jerk the figures’ spider limbs and finger their grotesque features while he delivers snippets of knowledge. Susilo’s technique is matey, not declamatory or serious. So there’s only a sense of fun, not formal learning.
In his presentations from behind the screen where he cooks under hot lights wearing heavy Javanese clothes Susilo works references to football teams, the weather and local events into the classic Mahabharata and Ramayana epics.
Susilo knows Westerners don’t have the attention spans of the patient Javanese who are prepared to stay up nine hours to watch the full performance. So his scene selections are cut to less than two hours.
He also encourages onlookers to loosen up, to behave like Indonesians, to chat and walk around during the show, to view the puppets from either side of the screen and peer closely at the gamelan players. These are all Westerners drawn from Victoria University’s School of Music, apart from leader Budi Putra who works for the Indonesian Embassy promoting culture.
Budi, 38, who also comes from Central Java, won the job through his ability to play every gamelan instrument and an egalitarian approach to the arts. He arrived in Wellington in 1996, mastered English and chose to stay.
“New Zealanders know little about Indonesia though their interest is strong,” said Susilo. “In Australia, where they understand more about their northern neighbor, enthusiasm is huge.
“In NZ I spend time explaining my country, culture and music. I do that at the start of the performance, in the middle and at the end. I want people to relax and enjoy, for the music of the gamelan is just like heaven.” Then he added with a chuckle: “Well, it is when it’s played well.”
But he wasn’t referring to the bule gongers who have earned their credits by performing in Indonesia, including the cultural heartland of Yogyakarta. During a three-week tour last year they astonished locals with their dexterity and knowledge of Javanese arts and language.
There are two gamelan orchestras in Wellington, one Javanese the other Balinese. Also among the foreign players is Susan Pratt Walton, a pesinden – the woman singer in a Javanese gamelan. She’s from the University of Michigan.
Susilo came to NZ in 1993 when he was 30 for further study after graduating from the Indonesian Arts Academy of Surakarta, though his introduction to the ancient arts started at his birth. Typically his father wasn’t there for the event – he was out of town working as a dhalang, the job that’s been in the family for ten generations.
“When I was ten my mother made a booking for my dad to perform. However she favored the modern seven-day week calendar,” he said. “My traditionalist father used the Javanese five-day week calendar for his arrangements. Not surprisingly there was a double booking. So I had to fill in.”
Another factor in Susilo’s rapport with onlookers is his undoubted competence. Westerners normally feel uncomfortable about peering behind the scenes while a formal performance of any type is underway, but given an invite curiosity usually wins, at least with the kids.
Seeing a dexterous dhalang work a collection of more than 100 whirling puppets, flashing them across the screen, dodging and receiving arrows and spears, spinning them up and down while singing the story and adding sound effects redefines multi-tasking.
In the competition for entertainment interest wayang kulit is seriously handicapped when measured against cinema’s special effects and computer games’ electronic gizmos. You can’t miss the sticks and strings, the manipulation is obvious. Because there’s no sleight of hand watchers have to exercise their imagination.
To keep the shadow puppet arts alive Susilo has composed modern plays for overseas audiences – Wayang Skotlandia in Scotland, Ubu Bush Pig in Tasmania and Karetao Puppet Aotearoa in NZ using Maori tales.
This last production was developed despite early opposition from nationalists who argued that only Maori could work on traditional stories. But jolly Susilo looks and sounds nothing like a cultural colonialist out to plunder other people’s heritage, and he says his work now enjoys Maori support.
In a country where inter-cultural relations can sometimes rub raw on such issues, that’s no minor achievement for Indonesia’s arts diplomat.
(First published in The Jakarta Post 30 April 2008)
##
Dr Joko Susilo is a bit of a cheeky lad.
At a big event in the South Australian capital of Adelaide last year, the Indonesian dhalang (shadow puppet master) took a shot at monolingual Australia; he knew the then opposition leader Kevin Rudd was in the audience and that academics and linguists were lobbying for improved language teaching.
Susilo suddenly stopped his Indonesian commentary to announce: “This is John Howard country – I must only speak English here!”
His aside delighted the 1,000 strong audience unconcerned about an outsider commenting on local politics. And in Jakarta it may well have brought an approving nod from his more famous namesake Djoko Susilo, the outspoken and influential nationalist Indonesian politician who loves baiting Australia.
Susilo, the musician plays it close to the line but he does so with style. Certainly he’s well-placed to poke fun at the West. He married New Zealander Kathryn Knox and has fathered two Kiwis who are now teenagers. He has permanent resident status and lives in Dunedin on NZ’s South Island where he makes a living teaching Indonesian arts and working as a dhalang.
He has a doctorate in ethnomusicology and has been absent from his home in Mojopuro in Central Java long enough to know what appeals to foreigners.
Stints in Australia, England, Scotland (where he was an artist in residence at Glasgow University), Holland and the United States where he’s held visiting lectureships, have helped sharpen Susilo’s communication skills.
When you’re a little brown man with a quirky accent from a curious land far away it helps having a jokey relationship with the audience to transmit complex messages about Indonesian history and culture. Particularly to those whose only knowledge of the archipelago have been gleanings from tabloid headlines about bad, sad and mad events.
Handling this category needs care and charm. Fortunately the bubbly Susilo has these qualities in spades.
His repertoire includes hands-on interaction with the public, handing out the perfectly perforated multi-colored puppets made of buffalo hide. He lets little kids jerk the figures’ spider limbs and finger their grotesque features while he delivers snippets of knowledge. Susilo’s technique is matey, not declamatory or serious. So there’s only a sense of fun, not formal learning.
In his presentations from behind the screen where he cooks under hot lights wearing heavy Javanese clothes Susilo works references to football teams, the weather and local events into the classic Mahabharata and Ramayana epics.
Susilo knows Westerners don’t have the attention spans of the patient Javanese who are prepared to stay up nine hours to watch the full performance. So his scene selections are cut to less than two hours.
He also encourages onlookers to loosen up, to behave like Indonesians, to chat and walk around during the show, to view the puppets from either side of the screen and peer closely at the gamelan players. These are all Westerners drawn from Victoria University’s School of Music, apart from leader Budi Putra who works for the Indonesian Embassy promoting culture.
Budi, 38, who also comes from Central Java, won the job through his ability to play every gamelan instrument and an egalitarian approach to the arts. He arrived in Wellington in 1996, mastered English and chose to stay.
“New Zealanders know little about Indonesia though their interest is strong,” said Susilo. “In Australia, where they understand more about their northern neighbor, enthusiasm is huge.
“In NZ I spend time explaining my country, culture and music. I do that at the start of the performance, in the middle and at the end. I want people to relax and enjoy, for the music of the gamelan is just like heaven.” Then he added with a chuckle: “Well, it is when it’s played well.”
But he wasn’t referring to the bule gongers who have earned their credits by performing in Indonesia, including the cultural heartland of Yogyakarta. During a three-week tour last year they astonished locals with their dexterity and knowledge of Javanese arts and language.
There are two gamelan orchestras in Wellington, one Javanese the other Balinese. Also among the foreign players is Susan Pratt Walton, a pesinden – the woman singer in a Javanese gamelan. She’s from the University of Michigan.
Susilo came to NZ in 1993 when he was 30 for further study after graduating from the Indonesian Arts Academy of Surakarta, though his introduction to the ancient arts started at his birth. Typically his father wasn’t there for the event – he was out of town working as a dhalang, the job that’s been in the family for ten generations.
“When I was ten my mother made a booking for my dad to perform. However she favored the modern seven-day week calendar,” he said. “My traditionalist father used the Javanese five-day week calendar for his arrangements. Not surprisingly there was a double booking. So I had to fill in.”
Another factor in Susilo’s rapport with onlookers is his undoubted competence. Westerners normally feel uncomfortable about peering behind the scenes while a formal performance of any type is underway, but given an invite curiosity usually wins, at least with the kids.
Seeing a dexterous dhalang work a collection of more than 100 whirling puppets, flashing them across the screen, dodging and receiving arrows and spears, spinning them up and down while singing the story and adding sound effects redefines multi-tasking.
In the competition for entertainment interest wayang kulit is seriously handicapped when measured against cinema’s special effects and computer games’ electronic gizmos. You can’t miss the sticks and strings, the manipulation is obvious. Because there’s no sleight of hand watchers have to exercise their imagination.
To keep the shadow puppet arts alive Susilo has composed modern plays for overseas audiences – Wayang Skotlandia in Scotland, Ubu Bush Pig in Tasmania and Karetao Puppet Aotearoa in NZ using Maori tales.
This last production was developed despite early opposition from nationalists who argued that only Maori could work on traditional stories. But jolly Susilo looks and sounds nothing like a cultural colonialist out to plunder other people’s heritage, and he says his work now enjoys Maori support.
In a country where inter-cultural relations can sometimes rub raw on such issues, that’s no minor achievement for Indonesia’s arts diplomat.
(First published in The Jakarta Post 30 April 2008)
##
Sunday, April 13, 2008
WELLINGTON - THEN and NOW
TAKING A RISE OUT OF OZ Duncan Graham 2008
The first time I saw Wellington, her heart was wet and grey.
It was a Saturday morning about 25 plus years ago and I was in search of a paper. Nothing moved, except empties skittling across Jervois Quay, rolled by the rain, proof that this had been a bottleground the night before. Was anyone abroad – or were they all abroad? They were – this was summer.
How could the capital of a nation be so bleak? And sleazy? Every second shop should have been a cheerful dairy offering the dawn people a glass of fresh milk with a yellow cream top and a leg of Canterbury lamb just to get the day going before watching the All Blacks perform a haka on the beach. I knew all about NZ – I’d read the tourist promotions.
Back to The Terrace and a timber guesthouse that looked more like a wardrobe perched on the hillside. The tiny communal toilet was on another level, adding to the feeling of being in a place that time forgot.
It had; this was the Muldoon era and anything that wasn’t dour and drab was likely to be baton charged. If not grey you might be Red, maybe even anti-apartheid. Now you can’t even smack your kids for making racist comments.
Outside a line of Vauxhalls, Wolseleys, Zephyrs and other end of the alphabet models seen through smeared glass because the sash windows were stuck fast. As they were in 1880.
But the rain didn’t last and slowly the city came to life presenting dazzlingly clear vistas of the hills and harbor so good that finding a paper became unimportant. Houses roosting like gannets on the bush-clad slopes, a hundred hues of green.
Curious gateways and steps leading into the lush and the dank, full of mystery. Alice would have been enchanted. A city where almost every building had a magic entrance and knockout view could be forgiven for almost anything.
Back again, and it’s still tough getting a paper on some mornings and many stories need a glossary of Maori terms to understand. Back then it was all in English. But crime phobia remains with hyperventilating reports of burglaries and bashings that wouldn’t warrant a filler par in any Australian city.
Perversely this is comforting: If there’s no more shock-horror than a punch-up after the pubs close then things can’t be crook in Mount Cook. Or anywhere else between Ohariu and Owhira.
The era of the sunset home for Austin 7s has passed; today you need a thermoplastic coffin on the top of your Japanese discard people-mover, plus a slobbering Labrador (a Slobrador?) on the back seat panting for pats from passers-by to make a vehicle statement.
The suburban status symbol is now a rusting rubbish skip dumped across the pavement with an unpronounceable trade name best mouthed ‘Ouch!’ It’s the rich nob’s look-at-me tag, more obnoxious than graffiti, uglier than the Mongrel Mob. Not for these folk a pleb’s yellow plastic bag on the kerbside.
Reckon Wellington is going downhill? It will when the next megaquake rocks the faulty city, but in the meantime check your neighbour’s bin for throwouts as proof of opulence. We’ve scored a late model vacuum cleaner working perfectly (though the dust bag was half full), a garden table and enough timber to do some handy woodwork.
The usual cast of whingealots still gets excessive publicity. The latest articulate joycops were given freedom to bucket Te Papa on its tenth birthday, presumably because it lets in the unwashed who might think Jean Dubuffet is the coffee shop checkout chick.
Don’t these up-themselves culture snobs know what the town was like before this magnificent museum, theme park or South Pacific Disneyland was built? Have they ever been to big shows in Australia where superannuated military police patrol the exhibits and all the signs start with DON’T?
Te Papa has transformed the south end of the harbor and it’s consistently the best show in town as all the dads, mums and kids know, largely because it really wants you to come in, jandals no problem, look, photo, even touch. And free. It’s the same at the Museum of Wellington that shows history isn’t bunk, it’s entertainment better than any blockbuster.
On the Civic Centre over-way are the lovely lines of poet Lauris Edmond: 'It's true you can't live here by chance, you have to do and be, not simply watch or even describe. This is the city of action, the world headquarters of the verb.'
If true then Te Papa is the adverb: Welcome.
But that’s not the word Wellington gives to the cashed up from the cruise ships who come here to spend. Lucky liner layabouts, they can still experience the rough old days and sail past shunting yards, concrete overpasses in East German grey and cement silos to berth by a timber dump fumigated by noxious gasses. This is still a country dependent on primary industry, and if you don’t like it lady, then log-off. It’s surprising they haven’t installed pens for live sheep exports so visitors could get some really daggy photos.
The businessmen and bureaucrats in shorts that provided a lunchtime giggle have gone; I’m sure the women wore cloche hats. Now Lambton Quay has become Cleavage Central, whatever the weather. The promenaders take their cue from Kupe’s wife, Hine Te Aparaangi showing her splendid bosoms on the waterfront as she points to the CBD. Wellington in the 80s was blokeville. Now it’s the Women’s Republic as the fashion ads proclaim.
And not just in the city. On the gorse skyline big blondes flip their mountain bikes over taut wire fences with the ease of hanging washing on the line, then hurtle down Mount Kaukau’s twisted tracks studded with jagged greywacke to the applause of a cicada choir.
In the early 80s the other quaint sight was the trolley busses. Progressive cities elsewhere had long abandoned such dated transport. That Wellington hung on was proof it was primitive, laughable. Now electric transport is seen as clean, green and advanced. She who laughs last, laughs loudest.
What appeared to be the curse of Wellington – the lack of flat land for housing – has turned into a blessing, an architectural challenge producing imaginative suburbs, a marvelous creative contrast to the flat, boring terracotta-topped sameness that marks the Australian mortgage belt, particularly in cities like Perth where the Pavlova was invented.
Well that’s what all kids are taught in Oz history 101. Wellington claims otherwise and maybe that’s right. This is a city that’s taking a rise out of everywhere else.
(First published in The Dominion Post 12 April 2008)
##
The first time I saw Wellington, her heart was wet and grey.
It was a Saturday morning about 25 plus years ago and I was in search of a paper. Nothing moved, except empties skittling across Jervois Quay, rolled by the rain, proof that this had been a bottleground the night before. Was anyone abroad – or were they all abroad? They were – this was summer.
How could the capital of a nation be so bleak? And sleazy? Every second shop should have been a cheerful dairy offering the dawn people a glass of fresh milk with a yellow cream top and a leg of Canterbury lamb just to get the day going before watching the All Blacks perform a haka on the beach. I knew all about NZ – I’d read the tourist promotions.
Back to The Terrace and a timber guesthouse that looked more like a wardrobe perched on the hillside. The tiny communal toilet was on another level, adding to the feeling of being in a place that time forgot.
It had; this was the Muldoon era and anything that wasn’t dour and drab was likely to be baton charged. If not grey you might be Red, maybe even anti-apartheid. Now you can’t even smack your kids for making racist comments.
Outside a line of Vauxhalls, Wolseleys, Zephyrs and other end of the alphabet models seen through smeared glass because the sash windows were stuck fast. As they were in 1880.
But the rain didn’t last and slowly the city came to life presenting dazzlingly clear vistas of the hills and harbor so good that finding a paper became unimportant. Houses roosting like gannets on the bush-clad slopes, a hundred hues of green.
Curious gateways and steps leading into the lush and the dank, full of mystery. Alice would have been enchanted. A city where almost every building had a magic entrance and knockout view could be forgiven for almost anything.
Back again, and it’s still tough getting a paper on some mornings and many stories need a glossary of Maori terms to understand. Back then it was all in English. But crime phobia remains with hyperventilating reports of burglaries and bashings that wouldn’t warrant a filler par in any Australian city.
Perversely this is comforting: If there’s no more shock-horror than a punch-up after the pubs close then things can’t be crook in Mount Cook. Or anywhere else between Ohariu and Owhira.
The era of the sunset home for Austin 7s has passed; today you need a thermoplastic coffin on the top of your Japanese discard people-mover, plus a slobbering Labrador (a Slobrador?) on the back seat panting for pats from passers-by to make a vehicle statement.
The suburban status symbol is now a rusting rubbish skip dumped across the pavement with an unpronounceable trade name best mouthed ‘Ouch!’ It’s the rich nob’s look-at-me tag, more obnoxious than graffiti, uglier than the Mongrel Mob. Not for these folk a pleb’s yellow plastic bag on the kerbside.
Reckon Wellington is going downhill? It will when the next megaquake rocks the faulty city, but in the meantime check your neighbour’s bin for throwouts as proof of opulence. We’ve scored a late model vacuum cleaner working perfectly (though the dust bag was half full), a garden table and enough timber to do some handy woodwork.
The usual cast of whingealots still gets excessive publicity. The latest articulate joycops were given freedom to bucket Te Papa on its tenth birthday, presumably because it lets in the unwashed who might think Jean Dubuffet is the coffee shop checkout chick.
Don’t these up-themselves culture snobs know what the town was like before this magnificent museum, theme park or South Pacific Disneyland was built? Have they ever been to big shows in Australia where superannuated military police patrol the exhibits and all the signs start with DON’T?
Te Papa has transformed the south end of the harbor and it’s consistently the best show in town as all the dads, mums and kids know, largely because it really wants you to come in, jandals no problem, look, photo, even touch. And free. It’s the same at the Museum of Wellington that shows history isn’t bunk, it’s entertainment better than any blockbuster.
On the Civic Centre over-way are the lovely lines of poet Lauris Edmond: 'It's true you can't live here by chance, you have to do and be, not simply watch or even describe. This is the city of action, the world headquarters of the verb.'
If true then Te Papa is the adverb: Welcome.
But that’s not the word Wellington gives to the cashed up from the cruise ships who come here to spend. Lucky liner layabouts, they can still experience the rough old days and sail past shunting yards, concrete overpasses in East German grey and cement silos to berth by a timber dump fumigated by noxious gasses. This is still a country dependent on primary industry, and if you don’t like it lady, then log-off. It’s surprising they haven’t installed pens for live sheep exports so visitors could get some really daggy photos.
The businessmen and bureaucrats in shorts that provided a lunchtime giggle have gone; I’m sure the women wore cloche hats. Now Lambton Quay has become Cleavage Central, whatever the weather. The promenaders take their cue from Kupe’s wife, Hine Te Aparaangi showing her splendid bosoms on the waterfront as she points to the CBD. Wellington in the 80s was blokeville. Now it’s the Women’s Republic as the fashion ads proclaim.
And not just in the city. On the gorse skyline big blondes flip their mountain bikes over taut wire fences with the ease of hanging washing on the line, then hurtle down Mount Kaukau’s twisted tracks studded with jagged greywacke to the applause of a cicada choir.
In the early 80s the other quaint sight was the trolley busses. Progressive cities elsewhere had long abandoned such dated transport. That Wellington hung on was proof it was primitive, laughable. Now electric transport is seen as clean, green and advanced. She who laughs last, laughs loudest.
What appeared to be the curse of Wellington – the lack of flat land for housing – has turned into a blessing, an architectural challenge producing imaginative suburbs, a marvelous creative contrast to the flat, boring terracotta-topped sameness that marks the Australian mortgage belt, particularly in cities like Perth where the Pavlova was invented.
Well that’s what all kids are taught in Oz history 101. Wellington claims otherwise and maybe that’s right. This is a city that’s taking a rise out of everywhere else.
(First published in The Dominion Post 12 April 2008)
##
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