The Tranzalpine - Arthur's Pass
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Barrytown,
New Zealand
Thursday, October 18, 2007
It had never been my intention to take this train journey, my original paln being to see if I could sneak up to Picton on the Stray bus, but I was invited to go back to Barrytown by Robyn and Steven, so I decided to do that instead. Unfortunately I will not be able to make a sword because Steven is away, but I will be making a sheath for my knife, which should be rally good fun as I have never worked leather before. I also need a proper sheath for my knife as it is now butting through my temporary cardboard one and putting holes in my toothpaste, which simply will not do. I will be making the sheath over the next few days, but first i had to catch the train, which meant another of my favourite early starts at 6am. I was fairly grumpy when I got up, not having slept well last night, and my mood was not improved when I found that the day was cold and miserable outside.
When I arrived at the train station I found that according to the carriage numbering on the platform I was in a fantasy carriage (that might explain why the ticket was cheap), but in the end it all worked out - though the train service could do with making sure that their employees can match letters up ao that the carriages in the train, are listed on the board at the station door, rather than a string of non-corresponding letters. Did I mention I was grumpy this morning?
Then the rain started, and quickly, the overcast morning (I had been wrong, it ws not miserable until that point) became an exceedingly grey and wet one. I decided that my best course of action was to go back to sleep and see if my mood improved after a nap - it was going to be at least an hour before we hit the mountains of the Southern Alps and I had already seen the Canterbury Plains.
It half worked, I was in a slightly better mood when I woke up, though I had missed the first stretch of mountains, but with three hours of mountain scenery to go and the promise of hot fresh scones if I just walked to the dining car, I was slightly cheered, despite the still-falling rain. The scenery was vastly improved from the industrial outskirts of Christchurch, and the fresh scones and tea warmed me and filled me and put me in a much more amenable mood, and it was not long before I ventured to the outdoor observation car, which, incidently, I feel they should start including on the Indian Pacific as well, as it made photography much easier. As I went outside I was greeted with an icy blast of air and a flurry of snowflakes, and I could hardly believe that it was still so cold as we crossed into the Arthur's Pass, but I suppose that the elevation would have quite an effect on the air at the height that we were at. it was a serious contrast to the sunny spring day I had enjoyed in Christchurch yesterday.
I stayed outside until the speakerbox told me that I had to come back in as we were going to go into the tunnels now, and there would be nothing to see, in addition to it being unsafe for us to be outside. I made my way back along the entire train, to my seat at the very back. I had just gooten used to the blackness outside my window when we burst out of the tunnel into the rainforested slopes of the West Coast. I had been told that the tunnel marked a definate boundary between the alpine and the rainforest, but I had not expected this. We went into the tunnel from what was effectively still an alpine winter, and emerged in a rainforest spring. Neither was I expecting the sunshine, as it had rained for a week the last time that I was on the West Coast. It was a good change as far as I was concerned.
From this point we wound down toward Greymouth, stopping briefly at Lake Moana to allow people to disembark. At greymouth I had a brief panic, as my things did not appear out of the luggage store. As it happened my things were just the very last to be unloaded, but as i had been one of the last people to arrive at the train I had not been expecting my stuff to be so buried. I met Robyn easily enough, and the only snag left was that the car that she collected me in was Steven's MR2, which had no boot. It was a balancing act to get me, my luggage and the shopping bag stowed in the passenger seat, but we managed it, although it was a good thing that we did not meet any policemen on the way back to Barrytown.
Once in Barrytown I was given some homework to do - leatherworking and natural horsemanship, both of which I will be practicing over the next few days. Naturakl horsemanship is particularly interesting because the theory is to create yourself as the dominant horse, rather than the dominating human. The effect is that you have a horse who wants to work with yourather than being forced to work for you - a better partnership all around. First though I will be making my sheath, which, looking at the large number of instructions and the thickness of the leather, is going to be more difficult than I had anticipated.
