30/06/2025
And that’s a wrap!
The final piece of construction by GC on the Te Ahu a Turanga completes four years of endeavour where we played our part in bringing this job to fruition.
It’s been tough, but rewarding – there’s something about working where the end result is something so very tangible and enduring. Some professions simply don’t have that….
I’m a bit older now, and getting to the point where the future is no longer unlimited – you need to budget the time left and make sure it is well spent. The energy and life-force expended over the last four years is gone forever – as you age it dissipates as surely as time itself.
When you place a block down, throw a shovel into the earth, strike a hammer or simply discuss a methodology, scientists would tell you that energy is released into the atmosphere as tiny amounts of heat or sound, and off it goes into the ether.
But I’d rather feel it has gone somewhere else - into the earth or encapsulated in some aura that rests and pervades the area where it was spent, creating a life-force where a small amount of you will always be there.
And I think of our younger team members whose lives undertook dramatic change in this short period of time. They grew from boys to young men, with houses and children of their own, and from being labourers to being skilled operators with knowledge and habits to equip them well for a life ahead. They’ll be able to travel this road for many years ahead and still hear their own spirit whispering back to them from the multiple points where we, Gateway Civil, left our mark - from one end to the other.
So, here’s the final GC poem from The Te Ahu a Turanga, from the eyes of these young men, who one day when they are old and wizened, and can reflect back on their extraordinary achievement in their early days.....
What did you do when you were young, Grandad?
Well, I helped build a road once, when my working life had just begun
What sort of road was it, Grandad?
Well…it was a generational project, one of an era. Complex and brutal, but gentle and beautiful, and there will be only ever be one…..
It’s wide and it’s high and it reaches the sky, and it cuts through the spine of a ridge
And the river it spans can flood all the lands, but it’ll never reach up to the bridge,
It sweeps on the tops and careens till it drops, to the cut where we battled the grey
And over our walls where another bridge sprawls, and on to the end of the way
With bones made of rock, earth and pipes interlock, to form the flesh and the veins of the beast
And a skin of black tar that stretches afar back from the west and into the east
It lives and it breathes as the land moves and heaves, and the life-force from which it empowers?
From workers who grafted and created and crafted for three and a half million hours
And that essence remains, for that great road retains, a small piece of us all who worked there
As the sweat from our toil dropped into the soil, we contributed all part of our share
I was on there four years, through blood, sweat and tears, I was lively and hungry and keen,
In the flush of my youth, but now I’m long in the tooth and the years have now passed in between
But the road that we grew still stands like brand new, for we built it to last through the age
And as I pass over it now, I still remember just how, we built it at each different stage
Or did it build me, to the man that I be, did it shape me more than I know?
For it hardened and honed me, challenged and owned me, and forced me to prosper and grow
To push for progress, and celebrate the success, and double down when the going gets tough,
Or to just back away, when you have a bad day, those times when you don’t have enough
To get out of bed, and face what’s ahead, to grind it and push it all day
And pay attention to detail, and work hard to prevail, for that is the GC Way
So I’ll never forget, as we stood on the deck, of the bridge in the dawn’s early light
With a tear in the eye as the first cars whistled by, tooting with cheers of delight
The feeling of pride that welled up inside, we’ve done it! We always believed
The work of a team to bring life to a dream, behold what we have achieved!
