I was born in Ngamotu, Taranaki with magnificent views from our family home of West Coast sunsets across the Tasman Sea reflected on the mountain.
Locals know, “If you can’t see the mountain, it’s raining. If you can see it, it’s going to rain.” After all, it’s the heart of dairy country and a great place to grow up as a ‘boomer’. My strong environmental and moral compass was forged between family Sunday roast dinners followed by ‘Disney World’ and reading Golden Books – ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’, ‘Chicken Little’ and ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’.
My career began with architectural drafting, for a multi-disciplinary firm with international staff, drawing luxury house plans, or a housing subdivision, including roading and survey, or Maui rig living quarters, or the synfuel production station, or the gas pipeline seafloor plot.
Then to Massey studying sociology and anthropology alongside social work students as the prerequisite for architecture. At Auckland Architecture School, I was the first female president of the Architectural Students Association, alongside peers who became partners in the top architectural practices,
Early in my career, ‘the rules’ in this male dominant world became apparent. I had to be better than the men to be equal to them, but get paid less! Easy decision – architectural contracting paid more. In the 80s high-rise office building boom, my skills as team leader were sought after in Auckland, in London, where Kiwis were lauded because of our building code manual, and in Sydney where behavioral sciences training gave insights into people's movement in Westfield shopping malls.
Before New Plymouth was the ‘Energy Centre’, it was the ‘Garden City’. World class, man-made Pukekura Park was my playground, where the red bridge over the lake frames Mt Egmont in a postcard portrait. No wonder I gravitated to Western Springs Lakeside Park once I came to Auckland.
“I’m Gael and drive a Snael.” (My S-Cargo is “one of the three icons of Auckland, along with the Skytower and Harbour Bridge”, according to a gaggle of K'Rd drag queens.) “I live on the border between Gay Lynn and Westqueer, and I’m straight.”
My life literally changed tack on Valentine's Day 2011, when my back was fractured in a freak yachting accident. The physical restrictions also stopped my sculpting. I started working as an unpaid community advocate and, as I say, “the rest is ‘HERstory’!” Now with new insight into mobility impairment, that affects 25% of the NZ population, my brain is more active than ever, following my passion to protect trees, the environment and heritage using my skills.
Architecture teaches the ability to see design errors, but not to unsee them. I didn’t need to study ‘play behaviour’ to know that you don’t play on main roads, so I joined the discussion group on NZTA’s ‘Play Street’ for Ponsonby Road to stop this silliness.
I didn’t need to witness my father’s nightmares at a near fatality with a school girl who ran out from a school bus, to know that 30km speed 24/7 around school is ‘overkill’, but illuminated signs at school’s start and end will ensure safety. Nor did classmate Murray McKellan need to have his head crushed by a bus for me to know that it’s safer to cross behind a bus, unlike the West Lynn village bus stop that even cycle lobbyists' media called a dangerous “fiasco."
Using our emissions reduction commitment as their weapon, a faction of so-called ‘urbanists’ insist that roads are “real estate that needs to be taken away from cars." NZTA admitted 'causing congestion', knowing this causes more emissions is glaringly ineffectual social engineering! fb.watch/hC6mrE7MWq/
Humps and bumps don’t ‘calm traffic’, they wreck suspension and anger motorists who speed away. Diverting traffic from Queen Street to Symonds Street, it’s playing Russian roulette with university students' lives. Putting a cycleway between parked cars and the kerb in residential streets is creating a potential blood sandwich.
Selfish developers have got on the bandwagon of not catering for cars. Each storey not required for parking means another storey of apartments. This increases their very lucrative bottom line. Profit is the name of the game.
Public transport and saving mature trees are how we’re going to reach emission targets, not cycleways. Let’s face it, there’s no such thing as ‘decolonisation'. Non-indigenous trees are not to blame, they’re bird habitat. The hypocrites who push this won’t give up making ‘colonial’ money.
Calling out injustice and hypocrisy, educating on local politics with honesty, transparency and sensible thinking, all whilst calling a spade a shovel as a writer for Ponsonby News is an honour. (GAEL BALDOCK)
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Published: August 2023