MARSHAL Gebbie has spent two years watching the Victoria Park Tunnel "magically emerge ... I've seen it go from an embryonic state to a solid morass of machinery," he says.
The 67-year-old storeman dishes out fuel, tools and equipment to the army working on the project.
He has written several
poems about the tunnel, which have been posted on the internet, hung inside the smoko room and painted on a mural outside the construction site.
"Some poke sh*t at it, others don't. There's some very appreciative souls."
He vividly describes welding equipment reflecting on skeletons of reinforced steel, monstrous cranes with hanging rigs, and trucks piled high with debris: "Legions of vehicles whistle by, watching what's happening with the hard hats below, and suddenly a tunnel magically emerges."
Gebbie has been writing poetry since he was a boy and is inspired by everyday things. He says he writes in a simplistic, rhythmic way and gets satisfaction from encapsulating his thoughts.
"They're so transient, if you don't capture them they're gone. Sometimes the beauty or ugliness of a situation should be recorded."
His employers, Fletcher Construction, noticed his talents while he was working on the Manukau Harbour Crossing two years ago. The company employed a film crew to document his poem MHX Emergeth, which was played at the Australasian Alliancing Association awards, helping them to win a prestigious prize.
The Mangere Bridge resident takes us down an emergency escape to the freshly tarsealed tunnel and explains how deep holes were bored 10m into the ground, latticeworks of reinforcing steel were inserted and concrete poured into walls and pillars.
Up to 400 men have worked on the 475m long, three-lane tunnel. "Everything had to be done accurately, precisely and particularly."
It was built on reclaimed land so chemicals had to be injected into walls to firm up the clay and stop seawater from gushing through.
"The tunnel sits on an old gas works and the site was full of tar oil and creosote," he says. "Keeping that separate from the Waitemata was a work of art."
Services had to be moved out of the tunnel's path then reinstated, including the country's largest sewer pipe, the Freemans Bay culvert, and the Birdcage pub. Beams were lowered to hold the walls apart, before ancient sediment was dug out, the floor installed and roof completed.
"Clay was up to the roof, diggers hauled it away and as it went artefacts emerged," Gebbie says.
A bag of sawdust from the 1800s, a rifle at the bottom of a well and a pile of 20 foot long wooden wharf pylons were some of the treasures revealed. "Several pylons were pulled out of the mud and made into Maori carvings for the new Victoria Park skatepark."
The tunnel will be finished two months before its due date. It will unblock a crucial bottleneck on State Highway 1 and improve the northbound approach to the Harbour Bridge.
"We've worked with massive traffic against lousy weather with minimum disruption. That spells achievement," says Gebbie.
Gebbie will need his hard hat and notebook for a while yet. His next project is the Waterview tunnel, starting in June. That's expected to take five years - time enough for a poem to rival The Ancient Mariner?
Open day at the Tunnel
VICTORIA PARK TUNNEL is holding an open day on Saturday, October 29, but you must register. Around 10,000 people have booked; 5000 places are left. The event includes a walk through the tunnel, food stalls and entertainment. See www.tunnelwalk.eventbite.com
TWO OF THE tunnel's three northbound lanes will open to the public on Monday, November 7. The third lane will open in March.
The Victoria Park Tunnel
