Just
down the road from my house, there are six mighty Pohutukawa trees on the Great
North Road opposite MOTAT (the Museum of Transport and Technology).
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| Pohutukawa 6 |
These
trees were planted during the 1930’s Depression by a Public Works Scheme on Auckland
City land. They are owned by us the people.
They
have been faithful servants to the residents of Auckland for 80 years despite
the polluted exhaust fumes they breathe in every day from the neighbouring
motorway and the Great North Road traffic.
Trees
make up most of Auckland’s beauty. Its human-created cityscape has horrendously
few public or private, old or new buildings that are aesthetically pleasing.
Hurray
for our handsome Grey Lynn villas!
Boo
to the hyperdermic needle that cradles a cancerous casino and defines the Auckland
skyscape!
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| Photo:Patrick Reynolds |
Mostly
the city fathers have endowed us a hotchpotch of bad and ugly architecture and city
layout. And yet Auckland is such a visually pleasing city regardless, because
of its natural environment of surrounding sea, jutting volcanic peaks and its
semi-tropical climate that encourages lush growth. Green trees, bushes and
gardens sprout and thanks to far-sighted visionaries we have been provided with
many parks and open spaces unmarked by asphalt.
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| Photo:Patrick Reynolds |
Here
is a terrific photographic essay by Patrick Reynolds.
Our
eyes are drawn to the tree versus the building(s). Imagine how bereft and unlovely
these spaces would be without the tree!
How
would we live without the crazy Dr. Seuss Cabbage trees doing their thing
against the backdrop of the glass tower? |
| Photo:Patrick Reynolds |
So many
cities of the world live without these gifts from nature.
So
back to the Pohutukawa 6 of Western Springs.
A
$70 million motorway interchange is being constructed and requires a
left-turning lane.
Despite the Waitemata Local Board (elected) who owns the
carpark behind the trees who were opposed to the trees being destroyed to make
way for the off-ramp; despite 53 submissions made by the public being dismissed
and therefore not heard by the Commission Hearing in November 2014 due to a
“clerical error”!!!; despite the trees heritage and beauty; it appears the
Auckland Transport (unelected authority) have the power to annihilate the glory
of these Pohutakawa giants.
19
lanes across of motorway must prevail. We need more deserts of asphalt.
It
is richly ironic that it was under a Public Works Scheme that these trees were bequeathed
to future generations. This modern massive motorway construction is a form of
Public Works and requires these very trees’ death.
In
older civilisations, public works schemes were called such names as the Seven
Wonders of the World and included such notables as the Pyramids of Gaza and the
Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
The
world is in fact littered with great (and beautiful) works of art and
architecture that kings, bankers and politicians have created under public work
schemes for the greater glory of the gods, or to immortalise themselves. Tourists
flock to worship them.
How
times have changed! And in such a short
space of time.
This
recent civilisation of which we are a far-flung colonial outpost, is now
hell-bent on constructing monuments of concrete wasteland, dedicated to worship
the devouring maw of motorcar.
The
mostly men who make these decisions – for the public good - believe they are making rational decisions
based on “bottom-line” (economic) reasons. They choose to believe they are the
objective ones and view people who disagree with them as subjective irrational
and emotional. This is meant to be a put-down.
Well
I think emotions are as important as reason. If both aren’t acknowledged in any
debate, we get into the place exactly where the western world is now.
Unconscious,
unexpressed emotion rules any kind of guiding reasonable intelligence. This becomes
fatal in those who have societal power to make decisions that affect all the
people. Their unexamined ideology - that is deeply irrational - administers,
directs and controls us and all our structural systems.
Emotions
govern most of our so-called rational mind –a deep-seated investment of a
greedy self-interest and elevated egos sit darkly behind most ideas/opinions of
the people who know the worth of everything and the value of nothing.
 |
| Photo: Jackson Perry |
I am
certainly emotional about this issue of the pohutukawas – although not
irrational. Hysterical I may well become if they murder these trees. (hysteria you will be pleased to know is
a word that means – disturbance of and from
the womb). Yes it may well be a woman-thing to grieve loudly when monstrously
stupid things are done in the name of “progress”,
by people who hold more power than you do.
The
three reasons I believe (oops an irrational word if ever there was one!) these
Pohutukawas should stay put are:-
1. They
are beautiful. They produce shade and beauty a resting place for our eyes and
our hearts. Their annual flowering is a delight that herald Xmas-time, summer
and holidays.
‘
Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all
Ye
know on earth, and all you need to know’
(John
Keats in Ode to a Grecian Urn)
Do we want to live in an endless sea of
human-made ugliness, dedicated to car and concrete?
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| Photo:Nora Leggs |
2. They
are old. They are our elders and our heritage. Planted during the Great Depression,
they gave men work in a terrible time of hunger and unemployment.
They are older than me –and I respect the
history they have lived.
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| Photo:Russell Brown |
3. They
are - and have been for 80 years – the city’s faithful servants. They are the
lungs of the city, storing carbon and producing oxygen. They serve us well by
mitigating the pollution of traffic. They
serve us by reminding us of the beauty and rhythms of the natural world which
is animated with other creatures that live in this city besides humans. Birds
nest in these trees which give shelter to them and our insect friends. Is it
not possible to show a little respect for our habitat and our non-human
familiars – tree, bird, insect?
If
the urban terrorists murder these magnificent trees, they murder part of us; the
part that is our human soul.
Now
that ineffable soul does not have a “bottom-line”; it does not worship 17 lanes
of traffic.
Can’t
the engineers who have designed and are so cleverly crafting this huge
motorway, come up with an alternative to their original design? What is so
difficult about saving our city heritage, developing beauty and giving a heart
to our city?
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