3 Poems on a Kiwi twist.

The Northerner, September 1975

Hick kid on a full platform,

Palmerston North emblazoned

on a smoked stained sign,

empty cups of tea on seats

where passengers sat,

the cold at 8.30pm evident

as Mum and Dad wave me off,

Mums tears hidden by a warm smile

back to Auckland for me,

young sailor heading back to work.

The sounds of carriages graunch together

as the locomotive takes the slack

and pulls out of the station, slowly

then building as city lights give in to

scattered splatterings of farms, dark

in the night, I sit on hardened worn

leather and wood, sparse, uncomfortable

my bed for the night, and the smell

of diesel fumes waft down the carriage

and starts to drift people off to sleep.

All the carriages are full, young, old

and all those in between, and I am in

a carriage of quiet, not my scene

for the long journey ahead, so I stand

and walk back first, back to the rear

carriages and the party buses, the "gats" out

the songs flowing with amber fluid

and the harder stuff, to fight the cold,

I sit, unfold my prize, 26 ounces

of black gold, Coruba rum, and they strum,

Fielding....

Hunterville....

Utuku........

strumming songs from the Maori Hit Parade,

Ten Guitars, Sheryl Moana Marie, and we

are all friends on the journey of night,

cold night and soon the bottle empties

warming my vocals and the freindships,

Taihape.......

and a mad dash for all to the Taihape Hotel,

fighting your way through the Ten O'clock melee

of Holden V8's and Black Power boys

crowding the pub with their ever presence,

their place, but we nightly invaders struggle

always a struggle, to do it in the 14 minutes

those who drank tea took to eat a pie

and down their Railways Cup brew,

but we all seemed to make it, tea and booze

and the rest who spent the time to snooze.

Waiouru.....

and the cold hits you, as soldiers came and went

round the vast darkness of a mountain asleep

and Ohakune, the compulsory stop

where crews changed, northbound/southbound

and the party went on, liquid fire.

National Park..........

I had never seen it , until I drove it one day,

years later on the daylight railcar,

Raurimu Spiral, feat of engineering

and kiwi ingenuity, round and round

and up and down, a splendour once viewed,

Taumaranui........

Te Kuiti.........

Otorohonga.......

towns that existed due to the very rails

that passed through them, stock towns

heartland New Zealand, but darkened by

the night trains ritual, and sleeping,

yet the party wore on as the grog dies,

Te Awamutu.......

Hamilton.........

Ngaurawahia.........

and the clickety click of bogeys on the bridge

over the mighty Waikato soon had sleep

burgeoning and the rest of the trip was

one of comfort, booze addled comfort

and to this day I look at those seats, and wonder

Huntly........

Pokeno...........

Papakura..........

places I slept through, and never met,

and then the stop, the silence, Auckland

and the early morning bustle of light and

commuter traffic, life again, and work so soon

and I have survived another trip on the train.

The Northerner, may you rest in peace, New Zealand Icon

Mountain Rail

Tucked into my tuna salad,

peered from the wide window vista

onto a northwest wind whipped landscape

of the North Canterbury Plains,

spied snow-capped peaks in the distance.

Listened to the sonata of the clickety clack

of steel wheels on a steel track, a lullaby

time flew by, soon the wide reaches

of the Waimakariri passed underneath

and rata trees and beech greened the view.

Craned my neck, left and right,

tall mountains of the Southern Divide

made this ride pale into insignificance, soon,

the little settlement of Arthurs Pass

my old hometown, way back when.

Twenty minute stop, walked a round a little,

visited the old school, the ranger station,

and the house at number two Sunrise Place,

skipped stones across a once dammed creek,

gawked at the sight in the little chapel, magic.

All aboard, and through that long, long tunnel,

slept a little, lulled by the dark, and the wheel song,

jumped alert at the other side, bright western light,

the ghost town of Otira now rotting away,

the occassional life styler, and hermit walking.

Across the broad green water enriched reach

of the West Coast plains, beech forested mountains

slipping behind, and the train rolled into Greymouth,

coastal city, flooding river, flooded beer halls,

and a population born hard to be hard, secluded.

and written before the Earthquake.

Picton to Kaikoura, the coast road

Picturesque splendour,

enveloped in green hills and blue waters

Picton, jewel of the sounds

stands alone in simplicity,

small town, big outlook.

I drive on, the ferry behind,

churning whitewater for Wellington

and pass the gap into Marlborough,

into the flat expanse, the Koromiko

cheese factory closed long ago, shame!

Journey on to Blenheim

a small place trying to be big, never!

supporting a rural diversity, wine and crop

cattle and sheep, and fishing too

stop for KFC in case I get hungry.

Now out on the highway, southbound

past farms and houses and people

going about their daily commerce,

down to the Awatere River and that crazed

bridge, one way, rail on top, makes me smile.

Through King Dicks town, and Ward;

little farming places where even the petrol

companies have withdrawn support,

ever onwards to the coast and the lure

of green seas and gulls flying in the breeze.

The loneliness draws in, as do the might

of the Seaward Kaikoura's, imposing

in their might so close to the ocean,

I admire the rockiness, and stony beaches

the raw power of nature not yet whittled.

The road narrows, and trucks inch past at speed

on their daily milk runs to and fro,

unlike me, cognisant of the seals

and large beds of sea kelp swimming in unison

with the rough waves and ebbing tide.

Offshore, leviathans of the deep roar

in their abundant playground,

diving to depths not measured and for food

never exhausted, Southern Wrights, Sperm,

and Orca all frolic for tourists to admire.

Through tunnels, and past railway lines etched

deep into cliffs and scree escarpments,

little towns that exist for the pleasure

of passing motorists, and life that is simple,

and their it shines, journeys' end, Kaikoura.

I have travelled that road many a time,

and always, I see the same things, but different

somehow, and I know that I will have to travel again,

that stretch of tarmac, gravel and scree, I yearn

for that road, for that pleasure, as do my kids.