Auckland held the two of us in a state of awe. We drove – very well, she drove; I sat in the passenger seat, the closest I have ever come to the action in my long non-driving life – across the isthmus on a recent Thursday afternoon, in the smoky light of winter, father and daughter having nothing better to do than hang out with each other in traffic. I was so happy. Our outing felt like a family holiday. We chatted about travelling to England together one day and I imagined that we were already tourists in somewhere like Cornwall or Yorkshire. In fact, we were headed for East Tāmaki.
Auckland has it all, as in it has all the sticky mangrovial creeks you could ever want, creating a giant kind of wetland interrupted by housing. No, she said, she never gets homesick. She loves Dunedin. She wears Speights jerseys to Highlanders games – she was shown on the big screen at one game, cheering, an avid blonde fan raised in West Auckland on the Te Atatū Peninsula. I suggested we drive out that way or maybe Henderson. She suggested East Tāmaki. Her cousin Nina told her it had great op shops. I would have said yes to anywhere. I am forever haunted by thoughts of parents who never see their kids, who don’t know their kids – the scariest word in the English language is estranged.
Auckland is never the road less travelled. Every road is glued with traffic, a city of automobiles often not very mobile at all, stuck on motorways and at the lights – but such is the price you pay for living in New Zealand’s best and biggest city, with its grassy volcanic cones and hibiscus blooming pink and orange even in winter. We headed south. East Tāmaki is veering towards the airport. She asked what I’d like to listen to and I said Taylor. She sang along to Fearless beneath the flight path.
Auckland is many Aucklands, moneyed and broke, living in mansions and in TENANTS PARKING ONLY units, cocktails at harbourside and sitting with a cup of tea on front porches watching trains rattle past their fence. East Tāmaki was something else altogether. It was six-lane highways with warehouses on either side. No one walked the pavements. I saw one person in a bus shelter – he looked as though he’d been waiting there for five or six years. We shopped and chatted, travelled and chatted, played Red and chatted. All parents develop patterns and languages with their kids; I tried to get us back to our old reliable dynamic, in which I play the idiot and she scolds my stupidity, but she had got too old for it. She wanted actual conversation.
Auckland is 1.65 million people (2023 census), including the happy Vietnamese woman who manages Country Roast next to the SPCA op shop in East Tāmaki. I ordered chips and a cup of tea, and got to talking. She said she worked from 9am until 9pm, six days a week. She had two kids, aged 16 and 13. “They say, ‘We never see you!’ But we spend Sundays together.” I asked, “Doing what?” She said, “Drives.” I was lucky. I had a carefree Thursday to share with my kid, 18, on the yellow brick roads of Auckland’s damp, magical Oz.
Auckland twilight has a fragile beauty in winter; in East Tāmaki, the sky sad and lonesome above Shower Solutions and Universal Granite Ltd. We headed home. I asked, “What are the five most monumental moments of your life?” Her answers were like an edited highlights package of a happy childhood growing up in pretty, ambitious, desperate, watery, hard-working, hanging-in-there, traffic-jammed Auckland.
