A traditional war memorial and the accessories of a groovy city park share this hairpin corner with an odd slice of New Zealand history involving KBG spies and counter surveillance.
The green space at the crux of the Aro Gully is made up of three parts, the centre and two sides of the upper valley cut through by the steep and winding track which became Aro Road and now caters for relentless city-suburb traffic flows.
The First World War Memorial stands in the centre, straight under ubiquitous and presently overwhelming Pohutukawas, somberly recording the deaths of those from Te Aro who never came home, and injuries of many who did.
On the sunny side of the valley is a more vibrant and popular sector, where local green folk, of whom there are many, have installed a bicycle repair station, water bottle filling station. One may sit on a park bench, learn more about adjacent historic Holloway Road from an information panel, or head up popular Polhill Track, but not attend the block of public toilets, as these have been demolished.
This is where the weird bit begins, in the rain and the dark, on a spring night in 1974, at the lavatories. The purpose of the meeting of men that took place was far more nefarious than potential clandestine activities that the time and place might suggest.
Dr William Sutch was a celebrated, high-achieving diplomat and public servant, who it was alleged had been recruited by the communists some decades earlier, and he was here to make an information drop. The sort of thing that now takes place in the dark of the web, at that stage involved dossiers in a briefcase and men in suits. The dossiers involved were purported to have been profiles of New Zealand politicians, and the man in the suit with the umbrella was Dimitri Rasgovorov of the KGB.
But the Kiwi spies were watching, from the lavatory, took some great pictures and Police locked Sutch up on the spot, although in an apparently untidy fashion. He went to court charged with barely heard of crimes, but the story changes tack here. Sutch hired celebrity defence lawyer Mike Bungay and was acquitted, then promptly died from liver cancer. The allegation only appeared to be quantified and to have achieved some kind of conclusion when, in 1990, the demise of the Soviet Union resulted in the release of files, which pointed towards Dr Sutch as a spy. Later, his widow, lawyer and academic Shirley Smith, published a book about her experiences. The couple's home in Brooklyn, by Ernst Plischke, is upheld as an example of modernism, and much of Sutch's work for the government is still considered of great value.
Back here in the park, the toilets were knocked down in 1999, and the City Council raised a plaque describing the events, but it later mysteriously disappeared. Then in 2020, a new one popped up, in shiny stainless steel, summarising the story complete with a copy of the photograph of the KGB man running in the rain. It was raised in the name of a potentially fictional 'Wellington Historical Society', creating a new mystery, but made the paper nonetheless, and the story remains very much alive.
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