Rock on Bridge – Windows on Bridge

Janet Bathgate

It’s part of life now, the cacophony of road works as I bike several times a week along Bridge Street’s footpath, to lock up at the barrier rail beside the gym. Peering down trenches, breathing in dust, rocks being taken out, rocks being filled back in. Was it really that strange to want to take some of those rocks home? Of course I wasn’t allowed IN to get them myself, despite wearing the bike helmet, but Matthew talked the digger driver into tipping his next trench scoop near the rail where a muddy selection could be passed under the plastic netting. Well, cleanly scrubbed and basking on my workshop table in the slanting winter sunlight, the rocks started telling their stories. Oh my, one was super-hardened tectonic argillite nearly 300 million years old. Another was an interloper from a brick works, only 150 years old. But most were Aotearoa bedrock – ancient, ocean-compressed greywacke. So many stories, as only journeying alluvial rocks – brought down from the mountains to the Maitai River floodplain – would tell. You don’t want to know the half of it, especially the geologically recent stories of repeated colonial road building. I made a few notes, and couldn’t resist giving some a pet name. Naturally, you will have your own names, and your own stories.

1. This sensitive little pebble said he could recall Māori footsteps as they passed on journeys to and from the Maitai Valley, especially early summer as iwi hunted kererū feeding on tītoki. Then the bullock wagons arrived and things got really interesting. Ink; acid free Mulberry 560mm x 560mm

2. Ranger was a rather angular yet drab piece of greywacke, until sun cast him into drama. But he was a closed book. Charcoal; acid free Rives BFK 560mm x 560mm

3. Bruce was a small segment of broken ‘Neighbours Westport’ brick, once part of a chimney in Collingwood Street. Or so he said. I think he liked the idea of “being around”, and his abrasion-worn shape did suggest travel. He was a little offended when Flake pakohe laughed off his short life. Acrylic; acid free Mulberry 560mm x 560mm

4. Petra was the largest and most shouty; said she’d been around the longest, but as pointed out by the quieter members of the group, they all contained elements that had been around since the big bang, so where did existence really start, and finish? Acrylic, ink & pastel; acid free Mulberry 560mm x560mm 

5. Gray said he came to Bridge Street from the Waimea River in a truck load of aggregate in the 1950s. Charcoal & graphite; acid free Mulberry 560mm x 560mm 6. Mysterious Roberta, who spoke not a word, had a river of quartz striations and a surface map of silt wash, time travel and infinite process. Acrylic mono print & graphite; acid free Fabriano 560mm x 560mm

7. The constant sound of the river and grinding silt never left this rock, even after the millenia of travelling was finally over. Charcoal & graphite; acid free Mulberry 560mm x 560mm 

8. Rochelle was the smallest greywacke pebble and looking through a magnifying glass appeared to be water-etched in patches across her surface. Charcoal & acrylic mono print; acid free Fabriano 560mm x 560mm

9. Basil had memory of upheaval and chaos when residing somewhere within Zealandia, 85 million years ago, in what is now the Tasman Sea, and was really looking forward to the next 85 million. Acrylic, ink & pastel; acid free Rives BFK 560mm x 560mm 

10. Max was dunite and threw terminology and ego around like confetti; an ultramafic plutonic composition rarely found at the surface of the earth; and also toxic to most plant life – quite the character. Acrylic, ink, pastel & charcoal; acid free Mulberry 560mm x 560mm

11. Flake was pakohe, struck from the mother lode, high up on the Mineral Belt near Maungatapu; she recalled the incredible heat and pressure that chemically metasomatised her from mudstone to a superhardened rock around 280 million years ago. Charcoal & graphite; acid free Mulberry 560mm x 560mm

12. Clay and rock smudged into sedimentary greywacke. Geologists now reckon our greywacke was formed as huge landslides poured off the east of Australia – but before you panic about Aussies forming our bedrock, just remember, it was a LONG time ago. Acrylic mono print, pastel & graphite; acid free Arches Moulin de Gue 560mm x 560mm

13. Quartz-like Blanche looked as if a digger bucket had smashed her side, leaving a landscape of peaks and troughs. But no gold in those hills! Charcoal & pastel; acid free Rives BFK 560mm x 560mm

14. China was a rogue, I admit it – a fantasy fraud. I was thinking ancient biological life, as in the compressed formation of greywacke from mudstones under the ocean. She emerged rather like a shard of Spode’s blue and white tableware. Acrylic mono print & pastel; acid free Arches 560mm x 560mm 

15. Afternoon light wrangled forth a grey terra firma of hills and valleys. Charcoal, graphite, pastel; acid free Fabriano 560mm x 560mm

Thanks to: Cutting Edge Signs, Isaac Construction and Thompson Property Group.