John Radford had heard rumours that there was a secret tunnel inside The Civic Theatre. One day he came across a trapdoor and found out the truth.
Listen to the story as it was told at The Watercooler storytelling night or read on.
I see the built environment of any city as a tree. As a kid I climbed trees and (surprise, surprise) I still climb them now. Climbing a tree is a pretty delightful process, especially if there are branches coming off the trunk, so if you fall from a great height you’re going to be prevented from hitting the ground.
A couple of years ago, I was up a Norfolk Pine out on the West Coast and I'd got right up the top where the tree trunk was about three inches thick. My ascent was thanks to the ladder-like tiers of branches that come out all the way up the trunk.
At this height, if I were to lean to either side and the tree top bent with my weight I would have snapped the top off the tree - and then fallen to the ground hitting many branches on the way. In fact, I’m pretty rapt that I can still do that and get right up there. People on the ground at this wedding I was at were going: “YOU’RE GONNA KILL YOURSELF! DON’T DO IT!!”
This city (which I do know very well because I have climbed it very much) is like a tree. Some of the branches are very thick and gnarled, bearing many finer branches that are festooned with big healthy green leaves, while some branches are wizened and twisted and have sprouted these mutated crap mirror glass boom buildings (mirror glass shoe boxes). Some branches have this weird rot that has set in called 'shoddy apartment buildings'.
There’s a weird thing sticking out the top, (I don’t know if it was struck by lightning) called a casino which is actually the tallest branch. The irony of that I’ll leave you to think about. So the city is like a tree and some of the branches have been cut off and are rotting, they have fed the growth of the tree as it is now.
People on the ground at this wedding I was at were going “YOU’RE GONNA KILL YOURSELF! DON’T DO IT!!”
One of the old thick branches of the city is a very gnarly, sturdy branch called The Civic Theatre. It was completed in December 1929 and could seat 2750 people. Auckland’s population was about 160,000 people at that time.
It was an atmospheric theatre. You walked in the front door and the staff all had turbans and harem pants. There were fake paper-mâché snakes. It’s an Indian or Arabic city inside the walls around the auditorium and around the big circle of seats. It’s incredible inside with minaret towers, twisted pillars, tiled roofs, walled gardens and a starry sky above. Above the screen is a massive arch and everything is covered in gold leaf, with mosaic tiles painted on. It is utterly incredible.
A Wurlitzer organ used to come up out of the narrow stage (narrow because it wasn’t a performance theatre but was a cinema) and an orchestra used to rise up out of the floor just below the screen on a hydraulic gondola playing with the organ as the soundtrack for the movie because this was pre ‘"talkie" films. When the talkies came in it all got a bit changed around. It is a miracle it did not burn down.
That is The Civic Theatre on the corner of Queen Street and Wellesley Street. It’s been there since 1929 and it’s been brilliantly restored to its original state.
Behind The Civic Theatre there used to be two little narrow streets which have been filled in now with part of Aotea Square and the Bledisloe Building walkway. Sited off those narrow little streets there was an area of land which was a flat outdoor car park. Across the car park was an external concrete staircase. You’d go up there and into a cafe called DKD, which had formica tables, chrome edges and 1950’s vinyl seats. The interior had brightly painted walls like some Spanish seaside town. Orange fluoro wall here, green wall there, and a powder blue ceiling. They had great coffee and great music, plus it was a really good place to hang out.
I had heard this rumour, through five places removed, that there was a tunnel, hallway or some portal that you could go through from inside this cafe through the wall somehow and end up on top of the massive arch above The Civic Theatre screen.
The rumours, every time I’d hear them I’d go to the staff at DKD (when I’m getting my hot chocolate with two marshmallows with my friends - no coffee because it’s near beddy-byes time). So I’d say to the staff “excuse me, is there a thing that you can go through to sneak into the...”
“NAH! Nah It’s a rumour,” they would reply. “It’s a load of rubbish, someone is making it up and bullshitting you.”
I’d ask again other times and they’d say, “nah, nah no doesn’t exist, no, no. no.”
I’d wait a while and ask again. “NO.”
One night whilst playing pinball with some friends down one end of DKD cafe, I spotted some cracks in the wooden floor and a small finger hole which looked like it was to enable what appeared to be a trap door to be lifted up.
I didn’t know what was in there, but I was sure I’d found it. The “Holy Grail”. The “Oracle of Joy”.
Using my friends as cover from the view of the staff, I lifted the trap door up. I didn’t know what was in there, but I was sure I’d found it. The “Holy Grail”. The “Oracle of Joy”.
So I stepped down through the trapdoor into this very low-ceilinged concrete tunnel which I had to crawl along on all fours into the almost completely dark interior. I was tapping the floor every few metres to make sure it was solid and wouldn’t collapse.
My friends above me up in DKD by the pinball machine then closed the trap door, plunging me into pitch black. Great.
Knock knock, sounds solid, crawl, crawl, etc.
Then something solid stops me, I stand up and put my hands out in front to feel. What’s this? It feels like a cylindrical corrugated iron water tank. I knock to see if rust is falling down into it from the inside. Sounds solid. So I pull myself up onto the water tank and am thinking - shit if this collapsed I could get tetanus or gangrene and I would be lying in the wreckage as a rigor mortis corpse.
I’m standing there in the dark. Pitch black. I’m really out of my league. Then by climbing up through some timber struts, cobweb covered beams and musty smelling timber framing, I can see that there is this ever so slightly lighter-than-black light just visible, filtering through a kind of lattice. I am thinking what the eff is this?
So I climb up into the framework more and I realise I am in the top of one of the minaret towers that sit either side of the Civic Theatre movie screen, LOOKING OUT THROUGH THE LATTICE WATCHING AN AUDIENCE WATCHING A FILM!!
I found the Holy Grail!
This story was originally told at The Watercooler, a monthly storytelling night held in Auckland and Wellington. If you have a story to tell email or hit them up on Twitter or Facebook.
Illustration: Daniel Blackball Alexander
This content is brought to you with funding support from NZ On Air.
