Where Is The Tree?

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This is being written just hours before the wrappers come off the plan that will amalgamate the various councils in greater Auckland into a single unit — the so-called “Super-City”.

There will be some anguish, head scratching and heartache, but only among the politicians and a small group of people who actually care about the place. For the vast majority of Aucklanders, it will be life as before. Unless the new council gets it totally wrong and there’s rates blowout — and that will get them going.

By any standards, Auckland is a small city of around 1.3 million people, which makes the epithet “Super City” a joke dreamed up by people who want to imagine they are important and rubber-stamped by an unimaginative media.

I suppose there was a time when residents of Auckland did give more than a flying fig about the place in which they live and actually took an interest, rather than just using it’s as a place to live. But that would have been in the days before the rapid population expansion that has seen people arrive here who have no sense of the history of the place and really only know their own street, where they work and the nearest shopping mall.

In a geographic sense, Auckland is a beautiful city with its two harbours, the gulf with its islands, volcanic cones galore, sandy beaches, regional parks and long, warm summers.

But, it’s a city that is largely without heart.

Most people use Auckland simply as an appliance. I just did a quick survey around this office — nobody knew that the stupidly named “Super-City” plan was being revealed today — nor do they particularly care. These aren’t uncaring people — it’s just they suffer from Aucklanditus.

What got me going was that as I drove from the airport back into the city the other day, my passenger, from out-of-town, looked ahead and said — “Why haven’t they planted a tree on One Tree Hill?”

There is a long answer to that, but the short answer is “because Auckland people don’t care.”

It’s almost ten years since Auckland City Council workers used chainsaws and a helicopter to cut up, cut down and carry away the ugly, misshapen old pine tree that had lived there. It had been terminally damaged by a couple of chain saw attacks in the previous six year, but had also survived a bomb attack in the 1970s.

One Tree Hill — Maungakiekie more properly — is a dominant feature of Auckland — you can see it from most points around the city. And from most of these points you get a very clear view of the hill in profile with the obelisk standing there silhouetted against the sky. The obelisk seems to be giving Auckland the finger, saying, “See I am the king of the castle, this is None Tree Hill.”

Auckland people may not know this, but the fact that almost ten years after the event, the fact that there’s still no tree on One Tree Hill is something of a national joke.

If One Tree Hill was in, say Christchurch or Dunedin, residents would have been so passionate, so interested, so involved and so angry, that the council would have moved double-smart to get a new tree there.

I reckon, if you did a random survey of Auckland people and asked if there was a tree on One Tree Hill, most would answer — “don’t know”, it’s something they just never think about.

I know that the longer answer is that the issue is part of a Treaty of Waitangi claim, but I don’t care, that’s simply an excuse.

Get a tree up there immediately, or drop the name One Tree Hill and called it Maungakiekie. In fact, the latter’s not such a bad idea — suggest that and there would be outrage at giving the place back its original Maori name! Then there’d be action.