Why Auckland is at its best in summer when there’s no one else around

Auckland in summer, when there's no one around, is the best time of year, say sSteve Braunias. Photo / 123rf

OPINION

As everyone returns to Tāmaki Makaurau after their holidays, Steve Braunias wishes they’d stay away.

Christmas in Auckland is the best Christmas. New Zealand’s biggest city pulls a conjuring trick, and with a swirl of its cape it turns itself into New Zealand’s smallest town — everyone leaves, everyone heads some place else, and Auckland wakes up one day to find it’s been deserted. It’s a Christmas miracle. In the beautiful absence, the only thing that moved was music. Auckland had an earworm this Christmas and it was Fairytale in New York by The Pogues, given new and terrible resonance by the death of songwriter Shane McGowan. A song of the dead in a graveyard city.

Christmas in Auckland gradually emptied the city in the weeks leading up to Christmas, but the day it woke up to find itself truly deserted was Boxing Day. Everyone who hadn’t already left got up and left that day. Imagine the frenzied packing, the frenzied children, the frenzied pets — really quite a lot of frenzy, until the family car pulls out of the driveway and leaves behind peace, quiet, tranquillity. It was strange to wander the streets on December 26. The desertion felt a lot more profound and devastating this Christmas than ever before. The only thing that moved was the shimmer of heat above the empty pavements.

Christmas in Auckland can be a lonely sort of experience and also kind of lame. Everyone else has somewhere better to go, why haven’t you? Auckland, city of orphans, the left-behind, the unholidayed — the only thing that moves is fomo. You wonder where everyone is, and imagine the fun they’re all having. But then you realise how grateful you are they’re out of the picture. Shayne Currie interviewed media company CEOs for his Media Insider column in the Herald over Christmas; he asked all of them about their plans for the summer break, and one wretch answered, “Collapse on the beach in the Nui with half of the industry.” I suppose “the Nui” is Pauanui. Imagine how dreadful it must be at Christmas with half of New Zealand’s vainest industry talking in loud voices. My heart goes out to local Pauanuians. They should come to Auckland.

Christmas in Auckland is a long, massive dreaming, a dream of floating in beautiful space. Tāmaki Makaurau is sometimes supposedly translated as “desired by many” — not that many over Christmas, the population reduced to a skeleton crew. It’s also sometimes supposedly translated as “land of a hundred lovers” — that figure sounds about right. The very few remaining souls who wander the streets all look happy; the only thing that moved was love. At night, I watched Korean dating show Single’s Inferno with my girlfriend. Its desert-island setting felt familiar. Tāmaki Makaurau, romance capital of New Zealand.

Christmas in Auckland is at its best in postcode 1011. I’m proud to live in New Zealand’s most expensive real estate postcode and as the poorest person in it, I was its sole resident over Christmas and New Year. I felt like I owned the joint. I don’t actually own jack, but to wander its scented avenues at dusk was to assume a kind of protectiveness, a guardianship. If anything went wrong, I would be there to raise the alarm. But the only thing that moved was smoke from my barbecue, scaling the walls and dancing on the roofs of all the vacant, darkened mansions.

Christmas in Auckland finishes this weekend. It was so lovely while it lasted, when its citizenry cleared off to the Nui or wherever, and Auckland reimagined itself as a one-horse town with sand on its pavements and the long, quiet hours of daylight followed by the long, quiet hours of evening, the shops shut, the motorways muted, the lawnmowers idle. Postcode 1011 was maybe the quietest corner of Auckland — one day I took a bus to Remuera. It was all go over in the poor side of town. Such a relief to return to 1011, where the only thing that moved was the tide. I felt so lucky to have nowhere to go over Christmas. Nothing is better than Auckland unplugged, Auckland undressed, Auckland unnoticed. Meri Kirihimete, Tāmaki Makaurau.