Joanne McNeill: Rocky road's seal of disapproval

Some of Northland's remaining unsealed roads are precious taonga, says Joanne McNeill

Last time the trees closest to the road in the avenue of deep dark native bush on Old School Rd were for the chop, official graffiti - fluorescent pink crosses sprayed on their trunks - were a dead give-away, allowing time to mobilise hi-viz forces, clipboards and tape-measures to mitigate wholesale slaughter.

This time, the authorities were more cunning. No crosses, just one morning, all of a sudden, there was the chainsaw gang in flagrante.

Apparently, the road requires widening for imminent tarsealing.

I appreciate residents' delight that tarseal will eliminate dust clouds but do not share it. In my view, this stretch of unsealed road is the last precious bastion between me and so-called civilisation.

About 5km long, narrow and winding, it offers entrancing views all the way down to the tightest bend (trap for the unwary) before the patch of swampy bush, (kahikatea, raupo, clematis, cabbage trees, totara, rewarewa ... ) hides the high rocky escarpment - marking the edge of our little maunga's eruption back in the mists of time - which is probably why this last verdant, wet, watchful, mysterious remnant of the way the world once was has survived untouched so long, terrain too tricky to develop.

Across the road at the bottom end is the school paddock. The school long gone, it's where students who rode in from the hills parked their horses daily. The rusty relic in the rushes might be the saddle shed. Back then (when mummies did not drive 4WDs) I'm told local kids couldn't start school until they were big enough to saddle their own horses.

The clay road's loose metal surface is tidal, sculpted by the seasonal rhythms of graders' visits, decorated nightly by boy racers' crop circles and gouges, and refined progressively by everyday traffic following lines of least resistance into balding wheel ruts bordered with long sinuous rills of gravel, until eventually volleys of potholes add the fun of potty-dodging.

Hawks, pheasants, hares, quail and turkeys take the east/west passage in the valley, drivers wave to each other in passing - possibly acknowledging having managed not to collide, or maybe just because a more genteel, community atmosphere prevails on such unsealed roads where, without painted white lines and with a perilous surface over challenging terrain, drivers must keep their wits and respect about them rather than whizzing along obliviously on auto-pilot, arrogantly assuming rights and safety as is customary on anonymous tarseal.

Some of Northland's remaining unsealed roads (except those plagued by logging trucks - bring back rail - where's the missing Marsden Point link Winston? Forget one-way bridges, we need rail) are precious taonga which warrant protection now before the entire planet is road-carpeted, we all turn into enfeebled automatons, and no one remembers the sound of reality rattling under the wheels.

These increasingly rare roads - symbols of a self-reliant way of life - are landscape and lifestyle assets. Visitors might even pay to tour them.

I am long past expecting any support on this issue so there will be no public campaign, no lying in front of the hot mix truck.

But don't say I didn't warn you that we will lose a lot more than dust when we tarseal the last wild road.