The Journey: Month Twenty-Six.
This year I have been able to spend a bit more time in Wellingtons most fascinating suburb, the Aro Valley. Home to damp students and good beer, one of the last remaining video stores, and an elusive practical philosophy school. The Aro Valley is where you will find some of the best and weirdest parts of Wellington's culture and history. At face value, the Valley feels like any other Wellington suburb. However, when the layers start to peel back it doesn’t take long to find a treasure trove of stories. These stories are rambunctiously passed down anecdotally through various unreliable sources. The size of the Aro Valley, as well as its central location I believe are key reasons for these absurd folk tales taking cultural hold. You would be hard-pressed to find a Wellingtonian with no connection Tor tale to tell from or about the Valley. My new job this year is what has brought me to the valley more often. Whilst I do miss the wild nighttime scenes of Cuba St, I seem to have fallen into an equally as fascinating community.
The first time I visited the Aro Valley I was on a trip to Wellington with my father in 2022. We had spent the day wandering through the streets of the central city. We visited Cuba Street observing the strange characters and sites. During the same day, we also walked the length of Lambton Quay and continued up Willis Street. The day was hot, truly Wellington on a good day it has to be said. After a long day of wandering and exploring and many coffees. My father suggested that we continue walking to the Aro Valley. I was tired and asked me why we should go to the Aro Valley. Forgive my youthful innocence, I did not yet know my own interest in abnormal, normal places. My watch had just told me we had already walked twelve kilometres that day. I wasn’t particularly keen to continue walking to some random suburb for seemingly no reason. But my father insisted, so we continued walking up Willis Street. Little did I know that the route we were walking would now become part of my regular route into the city each day. We neared the pedestrian crossing opposite Aro Street if you are familiar with this crossing you will know it's rather unique. The initial crossing crosses to an island at the centre of the ’T’. Then two smaller crossings branch off the island and meet with the footpath. This means that when crossing you get a look straight up the Valley in a rather cinematic fashion. The framing of the entrance is beautiful and striking.
I noticed something small in the middle of the crossing. It was the limp body of a tiny kitten. The fluffy golden fur looked soft and clean. The kitten was so young, you could have picked it up with the palms of your two hands. It lay in between two of the thick bright white stripes of the zebra crossing. I couldn’t see any gash or mark on the kitten but there was a fittingly small pool of blood around the kitten's head. The bright crimson colour was vibrant and shocking. The kitten was lifeless. The whole situation still looked fresh, fresh in this instance doesn’t seem like such a nice word anymore. The blood was thick, not trickling like water but holding its meniscus strong around the small pool. All these details I witnessed in a moment as we crossed the road, too shocked to stop. The sound of a truck waiting for us to cross, the heat of the sun, the breeze. A silence came and dwelled between my father and I as we walked. The kitten sat in the front of my mind, so vivid to the point of almost being a dream.
We kept walking up the Valley, I was struck by the bright old buildings, and pokey side streets built for a different time. As we neared Aro Park the silence came to an end as my father pointed out the public bathrooms. “In the 70s I think those public toilets were used as a Russian spy base.” I look at the tranquil park as a man sits on a bench and smokes a cigarette. Still in mild shock from the kitten, I didn’t quite comprehend what my father had told me. He continued to tell me a story which I could tell that he remembered very little of. Apparently, there was a sting operation to catch documents being passed between a KGB Agent and a Politician in those toilets. At first, I didn’t believe my father. I looked again at the man smoking covered by the shade of the large peaceful trees. The place matched up with the eluded awesomeness of the story I had just been told. Much like the dead kitten from before this story seemed too unexpected and specific not to be real. I would later find out that a meeting did occur between politically important figure Bill Sutch and KGB agent Dmitri Razgovorov. However it wasn't at the set of toilets we were looking at then, the meeting happened further up the valley. There was also never any hard proof that any information was actually handed between the two men. There is so much mystery surrounding this event, that it lends itself perfectly to a true Wellington folk tale. Everyone has a slightly different version of what really went down in the rain on the 26th of September 1974. Every time the story of Bill Sutch pops up in conversation I remember this trip to the Aro Valley. How can something worthy of being in a Le’Carre Novel, happen in a tiny seemingly boring place ‘Sutch’ as the Aro Valley?
There are so many normal places like the Aro Valley with mysterious, beautiful, sometimes sinister underbellies. History and stories don’t play by rules in the real world. It is very rare for a real story to have a tidy ending, often because stories don’t end. Our perspective or recollection of an event is almost always never representative of how anyone else witnessed things. Take the kitten, I don’t know how old it was or who it was owned by. It may have been the first time it was allowed out of the house, it may have not been allowed out of the house. I don’t even know if the kitten had a house, all I saw was a snippet, the tragic end. The Bill Sutch Story is well documented yet still most details about the relationship between Sutch and The KGB are unknown and inconclusive. I think we need to learn to settle for these messy stories. We need to be ok with knowing our perspective is not conclusive, simply a perspective on the things we have seen or heard.
Much Love, be blessed
Jesse
P.S if you would like to hear more about the spy in the Aro Valley, here is link to an RNZ podcast which does an exceptional job at trying to tell it!
Wow- I have crazy stories about Aro Valley from back in 93 when I lived there.
I loved the bakery :)