Tamang Heritage Trail Diary – Via Kochi

Friday 21 February 2020

Getting launched this morning was a factor of lasts nights preparation which might sound like I am organised but that would be misleading to imply The previous evening had been complicated by the need to drop Mak at the vet, then shop for last minute kit – mainly hand sanitiser. The COVID19 story is starting to ramp. We have a couple of half used little bottles we regularly use but the coronavirus panic has resulted in a dearth of this stuff in our Chinese centric community.  But there is plenty in the Miranda pharmacies . We actually were resigned to buying sanitiser in bulk then loading up a couple of smaller dispensing containers purchased at Paddy Palin. The idea is that we have this stuff hanging from our packs rather than hidden inside. That might prompt our use of it. Home from shopping to an online exam followed by packing at 10pm. Fortunately most of my kit is ready to go and bags are reclosed shortly thereafter. A slow start this morning on a temperate, humid and overcast day. Our first Uber ride (ever) to the airport is painless and far cheaper than the usual cab connection. Price is never really the metric of concern in this city (within reason) but whether or not Sydney’s traffic will conspire against your travel plans. This morning everyone is on our side and we arrive with plenty of time to spare and with few fellow travellers. The airport is relatively empty and we are through the barriers and into our bacon and eggs before we know it. SQ232 is delayed, not helped by a very non Singapore airlines crush at the boarding gate but it’s not a full flight and this 380 had plenty of vacant seats. We lift over Botany Bay at Magicians time – which is of course Gandalf’s ‘ precisely when he means to’.

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The Fort

Recollections 7

The fort is probably something that looms larger and more perfect in memory than it was in fact. But even if it was half the establishment we think it was it remains something quite creative and even formidable. At least in the eyes of a kid. 

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The Plan(tation)

Recollections (6)

So, while it’s a small town with only Puketapu (Pookie) to geographically mark it for the passing traveller, there were any number of points that anchored my boyhood view of the place. The curved platform of the railway station for a start. That always entranced me, as did the rails, the rolling stock, the fragrance of coal and oil mixed with earth, and the prospect of far away places. The Plank, a ford or river crossing of the Shag River where we fished for eels, cut down trees, jumped from an old willow tree into the deepest part, sailed toy boats, lured elusive trout, threw rocks and made dams. Summer day memories of exploring downstream from the Plank through long green grass, the smell of wild mint, cutting through every now and then as we checked each dark pool for the shadow of fish. The Shag River empties into the ocean at Shag Point, both named after the cormorant that lives along the coast, otherwise known locally as a Shag. Black Shags mainly. Little Shags too. Trotters Gorge was a special, favourite location. “The Valley” already mentioned which traces up along the Horseback and Kakanui Ranges and through which Highway 85 runs. Macraes Flat (long before the mine) and Nenthorn, country familiar to many thanks to the Lord of the Rings. Places that were familiar to us but which were often never signposted, or had any specific centre of settlement. Morrisons is part of our DNA. The old coach inns, some repaired and some now vanished along side the highway from Cobb and Co days (there tended to be a settlement every ten miles, the distance horses hauling a wagon of goods could make it in a day). The weir at Glenpark, full of dark water under silent willows. Other places of special note included the library (Mrs Green) and the Post Office (Mrs Jopson). The Newsagent owned by the Applebys. Dad Appleby and his twin sons, nicknamed Drip and Drop by some, but never us. They were too generous and kind for that. Applebys was an Aladdin’s Cave of variety but especially the source of fishing lures and other tackle and in later years sneak peeks into Playboys while some of the gang distracted the twins. The home of Doctor Harper. The Presbyterian Church building next door and its accompanying Clark Hall. “Horrible Halls”, a derelict run down place in which we hid a hut in the attic. Any number of huts perched up trees dotted around the district or small underground bunkers dug into forest floors.  And of course the numerous homes of friends which were open homes to us. 

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Puketapu

Recollections 5

Palmerston has a glow about it which comes from lots of memory burnishing, especially polishing that has as its base compound a happy childhood. In truth it’s a tiny country town for which, to those who are not residents, there is little or nothing to commend it. And of course that is the vast majority since only 800 or so reside in that grand metroplis. Which to my ten year old mind it truly was. It outstripped Waikouaiti, home to a mere 500 souls or so, or Dunback at 30 if everyone was in for Sunday lunch. Or any number of small hamlets up and down the line or valley against which I was happy to pit our town. Though if we were ever under threat of being upstaged it was perfectly acceptable to lift 800 to 900, which happened more often than I was ever keen to admit. 

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A Yellow Bug

Recollection 3: A Yellow German Bug

I was not in Dunedin very long. After five years, a yellow German VW beetle clattered me from there and transported me north. Twenty years after we beat them in a global stoush I was being given a lift in one of their cars. We were buying Japanese cars too but in an altogether different configuration. One of my earliest memories was of toy cars made from recycled tin. Thin plastic wheels. Painted passengers. But when you flipped the car over the undercarriage was revealed to be absent except for the thin wire axles. However the original advertising or branding on the reverse of the tin was visible. I recall blue images of fish, no doubt a recycled tin of tuna. And characters ascribed to the Japanese though how we knew that at such a young age I have no idea. But years before Toyota and their TQM and precision engineering we had a derogatory view of their quality. If it was of dodgy manufacture it was “Made in Japan” in the same way a more recent generation has grown up ascribing rubbish to the Chinese. 

In those early years however  the family didn’t have a car so we walked everywhere, were given lifts, or caught the bus. We lived on Carrington Road in a house Dad renovated. If I have my facts correct (always doubtful)  his father had loaned my parents enough money to buy the house. Renovated and sold, Dad repaid the loan and used some of the profit to purchase their first car. A Holden. HD or HR? But I get ahead of myself again. 

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Palmerston Sky

Recollections 4

If we are contemplating missiles and such, perhaps we can start this recollection with Skylab. Standing in cool air in the dark on the top of ‘the bank’ staring into a sparkling black sky waiting for movement. Then we hold our breath in wonder as a bright diamond rapidly slides across the deep dark of the night sky. And it was dark. No light pollution to ruin the view. Somehow that bright light connected me with the rest of the world in same way aircraft heading to Dunedin did. Passenger aircraft. Freighters including a regular Argosy run. Those orange tailed C-130s the US flew down to the Antarctic in summer. Flying from Christchurch mostly, arcing past a town of 800 people that was home to a twelve year old who escaped into a whole other world out there, imagining points of departure and places of arrival. Not that I was really looking to leave. I was happy there, content for the moment to be rooted in rural Otago, resident in a town no astronaut or pilot ever imagined existed.

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Bay of Pigs in New Zealand

Recollections (2)

In April 1961 an attempted military-by-proxy (a favourite US formula) invasion of Cuba took place by those who were no admirers of Fidel Castro and his Communist buddies. Backed and trained by the CIA the invasion at the Bay of Pigs was reduced to naught in three days and is often used to define the word ‘fiasco’.  At least on the part of the Americans, for it cemented Castro as a national hero and helped stitch up the relationship between Havana and Moscow. Emboldened by the idea that they had a friendly ally so close to the US and from which you could throw stones onto houses in Florida, Moscow figured they would plant missiles there. So between April 1961 through into 1962 the world was drawn into an increasing period of tension which culminated in the Cuban Missile Crisis as Russia deployed SS-4 Sandal medium range missiles onto Cuban soil. Eventually Moscow and Washington defused everything and the crisis was considered over in November 1962 but not before everyone thought they would be cooked in an instant of ‘one flash and you’re ash’ ‘mutually assured destruction.’

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Guts for Garters

Recollections (1)

In the movie “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” Hec, the grumpy character played by Sam Neill, in the final denouement moments of the story, threatens his protégé with the warning that, should the boy Ricky Baker outperform Hec, he would use the boy’s ‘guts for garters’. It was such an unexpected line I laughed out loud  and even in rewatching the movie I wait for the line as the movie closes. It’s such a wonderful line with deep undertones of awful violence. To use one’s intestines, presumably cleaned out, twisted and dried, as instruments by which to keep your socks up implies foul murder and wanton butchering. What’s to be done, after all,  with the rest of the body if only garters are produced? I’m surprised the line survived the editorial cut but I’m pleased it did, for it’s a line my father used and it ‘takes me back’. Back to lines which threatened unreasonable death such as “I’ll knock your block off” or lesser drubbings such as  “Do you want spiflicating?” or “I’ll belt you into the middle of next week”. That was a delicious favourite, as I imagined flying through time to find out what would happen before anyone else arrived. None of it was ever taken seriously of course but the tone was about suggesting you had better straighten up. Indeed, that word spiflicate was beyond our understanding. It was the sort of thing the old man might have made up and right through into our teens we imagined that was the case.  So it was with a cry of delight that brother Rob rushed through the school library one afternoon and declared the word actually existed in the English language. So, said the Greater Oxford Dictionary. Sadly the meaning was far more droll than the magnificent and exotic lashing we imagined it might represent. 

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Barrington Tops

Australia Day Weekend 2019

We clear town while the dawn sky is being scrubbed with a small dose of bleach, taking the colour out of the horizon leaving the white sky to hint at the hot day to come. The air is cool for the moment and we are deceived into thinking the humidity is low but in truth the lightest effort raises a sweat. It’s Saturday morning and we have a three hour run up to Barrington Tops followed by a 19km walk and we want to beat the traffic which will bottleneck Sydney over the next hour or two – by the time that happens we want to have packs strapped, boots on and metres behind us. 

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Sunday Sunday

Sunday 15^thJuly 2018

We sleep in, after a fashion. 7am is a sleep-in around here. Despite best efforts we are awake relatively early and that is perhaps a factor of light. Most of the crew are asleep when we walk up to the local community church where our number of ten ‘blows them up” – to borrow local phrase (A bus load of 42 visitors just blew up town (McCarthy)).” We get to choose favourite hymns so we grab some we haven’t touched in a while. The pastor walks us through a very good lesson on prayer and at the end of the service we are invited to lunch. Actually we were invited even as we had barely sat down. How could we refuse?

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Snow at Bonanza

Saturday 14^thJuly

The perpetual daylight keeps things well illuminated but not so much that we can’t sleep. We have been advised to bring those devices the airlines hand out to shade your eyes but I have not had to use them.  This morning it’s not the light that wakes me but the pitter patter of light rain. I listen to it at 5am and let it lull me back to sleep. I wake an hour later and lie there enjoying the warmth of the tent, even to the point of opening up the sleeping bag to cool off. Follow the white rabbit»

Fire on the Mountain

Friday 13^thJuly 2018

There is ‘fire on the mountain” this morning. Cloud shifts swiftly in long ribbon strips along the hills, white against the green, following the contours as it were, and a light rain intermittently scatters itself, sometimes so light the first awareness is the sound of the drops in the Alder, a fine pitter patter that barely registers on the ground, but after some time leaves you quite damp. We are up fairly early getting gear ready but despite even the best preparation and most comprehensive warning some are still not ready by 8.30 when everyone rushes out of the Lodge and charges up to the footbridge. We arrive there at 0836 just as Hollis arrives in his van, though we had booked him for 0900. Other trekkers or visitors (likely the latter) are waiting and expect to be given a lift but are to be disappointed when Hollis calls out “Are you the party of 19?” Follow the white rabbit»

Fireweed Mountain

Thursday 12 July 2018

 

Around here the locals tell us they use the Fireweed flower as a weather barometer of sorts. The plant pushes up a single flower stalk which is preloaded with hot pink buds. These open from the bottom and over a period of time the initial blooms drop off and are replaced by new blooms opening further up the stem. So on and so on will the buds at the very top finally open. At that point, when the flowers have expired and the last ones transformed into ‘smoke’ filaments the first snow is due to arrive. There is no prospect of snow right now  since these flowers are only blooming halfway up the stem. However there is another metric at play. Fireweed Mountain, which looms high above us to the northwest of our lodgings and which forms the western buttress through which the Kennicott Glacier attempts to squeeze, is also a winter canary. Follow the white rabbit»

Kennecott Mine

Wednesday 11 July 2018

 

Once again we set ourselves the target of departing by 0900 and leave at 0940. Today we have a deadline and in fact I had a deadline of 1000 so I’m happy that we are moving by 0940. However, more to the point I am really pleased with the way everyone had breakfast and broke camp. Putting up and taking down tents in the rain is an art form. Last night, with the last of the rain falling I was able to coach some on the drill of getting a tent up without getting into a totally wet home despite the downpour. There is nothing quite like getting out here and doing this sort of thing to learn the tricks. We start the day by getting our food and other scented stuff out of the bear food container then returning to the rock scree to set up breakfast. The weather is slightly overcast but up here I can see south to the Churgach Mountains which have broken cloud over them so I’m hopeful the day will clear up – given the weather moves up from the south. That proves to be the case and the cloud moves off surprisingly quickly. There is no rain to speak of, and no wind. Follow the white rabbit»

From Kennicott to Kennecott

Monday 9^thJuly 2018

Brad Grossweiler, our host, observes with his slow drawl that he was surprised no one was up when he came over at 8am. But this morning everyone slept in and caught up on all the frentic travel that has happened to date. We eventually dislodge (nice pun) ourselves and walk up to McCarthy, pause there then press on to Kennecott. Its an 8km easy walk up the ‘Wagon Trail’ which passes alongside the main road which in our continues to follow the original railway line and its gradient. Its interesting to spot in the road numerous posts that were no doubt part of original trestles supporting the railway, many of them around the McCarthy junction where the museum is located. Just across the road from that museum in the Soapberry bushes is hidden the original turntable, the cradle still sitting in its pit. The locomotive would be turned around here after coming up from Cordova then it would reverse the flatbed rolling stock up to the mine, collect the ore (in hessian bags) then roll down hill back to Cordova 196 miles away. Follow the white rabbit»