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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 5, Issue 5 (September 1, 1930)

“Pictures All The Way” — Dunedin To Christchurch By Rail

page 25

“Pictures All The Way”
Dunedin To Christchurch By Rail
.

There's nothing much to see on the way up, so I've brought you some magasines,” said my friend. But he was mistaken. I never opened one of them, for there were pictures all the way!

“It's a long journey, and there is nothing much to see,” said a kind friend who had come down to the Dunedin railway station to see me off by the Christchurch express. “I've brought you these magazines so that you won't be too bored.”

I thanked him cordially. The prospect of a whole day in the train and not much to see brought the shadow of boredom very close. I settled down into my comfortable seat as the express moved out from the station, and thought how nice it would be to have four magazines to read, one after the other, on a clear run of 230 miles, nothing to look at, nobody to make conversation with—very different from that exciting North Island “Daylight Limited” run, where you are constantly stretching your neck to look down precipitous ravines or up at snow-clad mountains!

It was a still, sunny morning in late autumn. I took just a glance out the window before I settled down to the latest “thriller” in “Purple Patches.” We were passing close beside the shores of Dunedin harbour, so close that the silver, limpid ripples came washing up almost to the track; flocks of seagulls curved and wheeled, silver-winged in the morning sunshine. Over the quiet waters, on the other side of the harbour, the red roofs of the homes in MacAndrews Bay nestled beneath the sentinel pines on the steep hillside, the red and black shadowed deep in the silver sea. White veils of morning mist still curled about the shoulders of Mount Cargill, and on the heights of the Peninsula Hills across the harbour, but even as I looked, there came a lifting of the veil, and there, sharp and clear against the blue sky was the Monument, that splendid memorial figure, a soldier in full fighting kit, standing erect on an obelisk of stone, that mounts guard over the City of the South; one of the most beautifully set of all the war memorials of the Dominion.

My gaze travelled back from the distant hills to the seashore, to a little rowing boat swaying gently to the lift of the tide, and perched, along her sides a flock of little white gulls, with a big brown mollyhawk sitting solemnly in the bow.

I fingered the pages of “Purple Patches,” feeling ever so glad I had it there in my hand, ready to turn to it as soon as the charm of hills and sea should vanish. Just at present, there was quite a lot to see. The shore was richly wooded, the track was now mounting a steep grade, and we passed beneath groves of feathery kowhai and kotukutuku, with the cinnamon brown bark peeling off in long ribands, and purple konini berries gleaming in the foliage. Wild-flowering convolvulus trailed along the banks, wreathing masses of tall ferns in starry white, and like fire in the carpet green, ran crimson sprays of the St. John's wort, with little yellow star flowers and clusters of red and black berries. A noxious weed, in the South Island, this St. John's wort, but to the northerner, a plant of singular beauty and charm.

page 26
Round a spur of the steep hills we passed, and there, far beneath us lay Port Chalmers, with its grey church and clustering homes, just a wedge of a township tucked in between the hills and the sea. Lines of wharves stretched out into the harbour, and ships poked their noses into the wall of the cliff. Another tunnel—did I mention the tunnels?—and another glimpse of the port, a winding road, and three ancient hulks with funnels at crazy angles, sides red-rusted, old ocean-going with its solitary deep channel.
A Picturesque scene on the Dunedin-Christchurch run. (Govt. Publicity photo.) The Invercargill-Christchurch Express near Port Chalmers, South Island.

A Picturesque scene on the Dunedin-Christchurch run.
(Govt. Publicity photo.)
The Invercargill-Christchurch Express near Port Chalmers, South Island.

Here was the blue, wide ocean, great surging breakers crashing down on the rocks hundreds of feet below, a coast-line more rugged and beautiful than any other traversed by rail in all New Zealand. Past Seacliff, with a glimpse of red-roofed homes—houses-by-the-sea should always and ever have red roofs!—and into rough, broken country with green headlands sloping down to the water… The sea, mile after mile, with road and rail running tramps home from the long sea-ways, resting in their last port. Most alluring now was the panorama unfolded as we mounted the steep spurs of Mount Cargill, with more and ever more tunnels, and glimpses of blue harbour between hillsides clad with native bush, and the sweet note of a tui singing unafraid when the train stopped panting on the up-grade to Mihiwaka tunnel. A long, long tunnel this, passing right through a towering headland, and bringing us out to the Heads and the open ocean beyond. Another long tunnel brought us, with dramatic suddenness, to a rocky, rugged coastline. Gone were the shallow rippling waters, the mudflats of Dunedin harbour, close beside the shore, sometimes with only a line of low, grassy banks, a few clumps of flax and waving toi-toi, between ourselves and the breakers riding in slowly, majestically, crashing in clouds of spray on rocky cliffs. Then tussock country, flat pasture lands, fields of turnips and beet of deep green, autumn-flecked with crimson and purple and gold. We wandered inland for awhile, through meadows and fields, past little villages and settlements, through flaxiilled valleys. But never far distant was the sea, wide and blue, shadowed with opal-green and purple, and a far streak of vivid emerald on the distant horizon. Here was colour and beauty, in sea and earth page 27 and sky, in the fields of Herbert, with its golden haystacks, stubbly golden fields, grazing cattle, and over all, the arch of the high blue southern sky.

We came to the quarrying country, to Teschemakers, with huge blocks of creamy stone piled beside the line, to Oamaru, on the seashore, with high-piled embankment of jagged rock, flocks of gulls in the green fields, and a white line of foam edging the bay. On into the golden plains of South Canterbury, dotted with sheep, with little homesteads where women and children stood waving at the doors. Over the wide milky-blue streams of the plains, over wide grey shingle beds, past Timaru, with its stretches of grey sand and shingle beach, blue lupins flowering in the sandhills, and line of romping breakers and swirl of foam not a stone's throw from the track, and in the west, the Canterbury Plains stretching far away to the foot of Mount Peel.

It was well after midday now, and the mellow light of a perfect Nor'-west Arch glowed like the rim of a golden shield lifted high above the mountains on the horizon. Past little Temuka we sped, through long groves of English trees, larch, ash, birch and elms, past Orari, with the golden sunset on its poplars and church steeple, and Mount
Speed boat contests on lake wakatipu. The “Cutty Sark,” one of the fast boats in the recent speed boat contests on Lake Wakatipu (Queenstown, South Island), racing across the lake.

Speed boat contests on lake wakatipu.
The “Cutty Sark,” one of the fast boats in the recent speed boat contests on Lake Wakatipu (Queenstown, South Island), racing across the lake.

Peel hiding his snow-crowned head in a pearly mist-cloud.

Doubtless the best was over now; there would be time for just one or two good stories before journey's end. But first of all, just a glance at this wonderful Rakaia, acres and acres of grey shingle bed, with thin blue streams wandering down between banks of lupin, oh, so innocently, so invitingly. We passed over the long, low wooden bridge, a mile and a quarter in length, longest in all New Zealand, over the main river channel, and I tried to imagine the Rakaia in flood, a grey, sullen, swirling torrent of death and destruction, surging down from alpine glaciers hidden deep in the heart of the mountains, over there across the Plains…‥ Oh, the mystery and beauty of that shining white wall, stretching hundreds of miles down into Westland, an impassable barrier, with but one road across in all those leagues of snow and ice, precipice, peak and glacier!

And now the train was passing through Dunsandel, Rolleston, Sockburn, Addington …. the journey was actually over! I rose with a start to gather up my luggage, and four magazines slipped to the floor. No doubt the guard would be most thankful for them after the boredom of that long, long journey from the South!