The Northerner, September 1975 - a Poem

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, back to the rear carriages

the party buses, "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,

Feilding.... 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 now 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......... Ngauruawahia.........

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