The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 5, Issue 5 (September 1, 1930)
“Pictures All The Way” — Dunedin To Christchurch By Rail
“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
A Picturesque scene on the Dunedin-Christchurch run.
(Govt. Publicity photo.)
The Invercargill-Christchurch Express near Port Chalmers, South Island.
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.
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!