Auckland in the Dark

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 484, 13 October 1928, Page 17

Auckland in the Dark

N a smaller way it can be said that Auckland, like London, is a city that never sleeps. Kvery city worthy the name, be it at the throbbing heart of an empire or pulsating at the other end of the world, knows a life by day and a life by night. Prosaic enough the one, but what glittering romance, what revelling and gaiety what sinister happenings, intrigues, felonies, are woven round that abstract thing called the night life of a metropolis. Just as one, and the greater section of the populace nightly closes its shutter to the hurly-burly'of the work-a-day world so another steals forth to play, to work, as though to ensure that the wheel of life shall not cease to roll. The jeunesse doree finds its Elysium in theatre, cabaret and dance-

club, au aspect of night-life that li its own advertisement. But there is another and a much less obtrusive night-life. It is the life of those who are called to work by the flare and glare of man-made day; it is, too, the life of those who watch and wait that it may be safe for the rest of us to sleep. Ten-thirty. Standing at this hour in theatreland, plain Queen Street by day, one can appreciate more fully than at any other the multitude which derives entertainment from the shows hereabouts. As these disgorge their thousands it seems that half Auckland must attend. How fascinating are the lights o' Queen Street. On a wet night they gleam brightest. There is colour and animation everywhere. Taxis draw up and speed away. The scene is faintly reminiscent of a fragment of Piccadilly Circus. Could we take a flash-light of the principals of “Carmen" at the stage

door? The manager of the company is very pleasant. He says in a charming English of his own that he will "arrange when the act finish." But the principals at the door? They might catch the cold in their voices. Will the dancers do? They only dance with their legs. The man in the pie-stall near the arrival platform on the railway station looks out upon the city-in-the-dark as from a box at the theatre. The street is his stage; the night-jars of Auckland his players. He sees the drama of life with all its humour and pathos, light and shade. All sorts and conditions are his customers. Rich and poor line up at his counter for coffee. Eleven-thirty. “Ho, watchman, what of the night?” “All’s well.” Moving silently in the darkness, a ghostly figure with a glimmering oil lamp, this man is one of several who patrol the mills of Freeman's Bay. They keep watch and ward over timber worth many thousands. A chance spark or a careless match may transform the massed stacks into a roaring holocaust. Other watchers, too, are chained dogs ready and willing to take a piece out of your calf should you be caught helping yourself to a few planks. When the flashlight fires they set up a ferocious barking that wakes the neighbourhood with living echoes. The General Post Office building houses more night workers than any block In the city, with the possible exception of the Fire Brigade Station. In the top storey cable operators are decoding dots and dashes —40 words

a minute —streaming in from the uttermost ends of the earth. P-o-l-i-t-i----c-a-1 upheaval in Spain awful scenes at New York fire.... thousands perish in Florida tornado.... Princess Betty cuts first tooth With ear attuned to the staccato voices of a hundred ships the Government radio man on the floor below hears the story of their march along the ocean highway. “Am hove to in a whole gale: will be six hours late,” reports the Niagara. “Airplane Southern Cross just passed over me,” says the Marama. A couple of doors along the passage the “Guardian of the Main Trunk” follows the progress of a dozen trains, ordering their crossing places and watching their safety. That room from which emanates the clicking and purring is the sanctum of the telegraph operators. The camera was unfortunately unable to penetrate the invisible, but none the less real, screen of red tape across the doorway. At twelve the night shift of mail sorters comes on to work feverishly

Unseen and Unheard By the Greater Part of the Populace A H Small Army Is Busy In the Small Hours A t Work Which The Fall of Night Cannot Stay

(Written for THE SUN by C. T. C. WATSON)

until 7 a_m. While the business man lies a-bed dreaming serenely of the ten thousand deal he has “wangled,” postal officials are unearthing 'from scores of thousands just that letter which, at 9 a.m., will regret to inform him that they have found out all about it and the transaction is off. With a shade over his eyes, the bet-

ter to read from uninspiring copy, and mindful that he is being paid on piece-work, a linotype operator in The Sun office flutters nimble fingers in setting the lines of type that decorate this page. There is an eerie stillness about the wharves. Ships whose ponderous hulls show blacker than the blackness of the hour are dimly discernible alongside. At the deep end of the quay you begin involuntarily to reflect.

The racing tide gurgles among the piles; something splashes underneath; the wind sighs forlornly. You notice a life-buoy and grappling irons. A pallid form floating by catches a gleam from the navigating lights above. Only a piece of driftwood! What a place for an imaginative mind! In the power-house on King's Wharf mighty generators whirring under the urge of steam turbines run so sweetly that they scarcely seem to revolve. Two or three men, lilliputian figures beside the towering engines, move about making adjustments with precise fingers. Ten thousand pounding horses in the hollow of a man’s hand! The marvel of it all. From the brilliance of a thousand lights brighter than noon-day we pass into the gloom of the stokehold. A fireman leads through a trembling avenue of hissing boilers, exhaling a heat

that stifles. We are going down into the nether regions. Our guide swings a heavy door, and we recoil from the fires of hell. We say it is hot. He says it is not. We ask him to look in so that the glare shall strike on his face. We require him to get closer and stay

like that while we focus. He says it is hot. We say it is not. Not a great step west of the Town Hall you enter the Limehouse of Auckland. We of this city like to delude ourselves that we are very cosmopolitan. Then here is our foreign quarter. Except that a few more Chinese hang indifferently about, a few more chop suey houses do business, a few more laundries solicit your washing, there is little to label the locality more oriental than areas. If Le Sage’s Devil On Two Sticks, who could see through walls and blinds, were with us I warrant he could say there are a dozen yellow men behind that door, through a chink of which you perceive the flicker of a lamp. If John Chinaman is a hard worker by day he is certainly a hard player by night. Still further west, if you know where to go, you make the acquaintance Jf a part the city ought to be ashamed of. They say Auckland has no slumland. That’s all wrong. Here are some creepy streets with houses all huddled together and broken down. You shudder. This alley-way whispers of the crime delayed; that, the haunt of plotting men. No doubt it is all imagination, but you are glad there is a policeman watching in the shadow across the way. There seems to be a greater number of policemen about the streets by night than by day. In the words of the Big Chief in Wellington they appear to be as thick as telegraph posts. This is probably falacious. They are, however, less conspicuous in daylight. One likely reason is that they are lost in the crowd or are taken for tram conductors or commissionaires or postmen. But the 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. shift wear their respectable hats, looking like smart members of His Majesty’s Police Force and adding a couple of inches to their stature and a great deal to their dignity. Every night when most of the pedestrian traffic is off the pavements Queen 3treet undergoes a thorough sweeping. Men advance behind City Council brooms driving into the gutters a day’s accumulation of cigarette butts, peanut shells and other attestations of twentieth century civilisation. Under the shadow of the University tower there is much midnight oil being burned at this season. Look up at that window. We scarcely need the aid of Devil On Two Sticks to tell us whose silhouette is on the blind. The poor, the miserable student, with -i

examinations looming a week or two hence grinds Misty eyed and jabbering. With vapours in his head, Yes, lan Donnelly’s "Crazed Philosopher” just about fits the bill.

The Library clock chimes out a doleful one am. The streets are empty except for an occasional taxi rushing through the night with its complement of drowsy hilarity. We trudge about wondering what on earth to photograph next. A big police sergeant appears from nowhere and solves the problem. He learns from his note-book that we have been prowling about since nine-thirty-nine. Who are we, and what are we up to? Would it not be a good idea to get along home? We agree.