Bonny Glen
1999 Acrylic on Hardboard 450mm high x 600mm wide (18" x 24")
The last Saturday of summer before we turn our clocks back to winter time, Mainline Steam have organised a Wellington - Wanganui steam train ride. We're so startled to find a tiny country train of one blue carriage and a van, hauled by an AB express engine of the 1920's waiting for us.
More people are not packing our train to the Fair because Tranz Rail have bumped up track rental charges for privately owned Historic Rail Transport Preservation outings savagely. They dislike competition, Mainline Steam-train people explain guardedly - Tranz Rail staff are also on board...
I love the van. It's got big decks at the front and back - superb. When we wake up a bit, my friend Kristelle and me will take the champagne brunch she's packed, and enjoy as sun-drenched scenery scoots past.
The next thing we're told is that Tranz Rail have only authorised open verandah enjoyment from Fielding to Wanganui. No explanation. We stop for an hour at Fielding so the train crew can have a break, and that blunts our disappointment claustrophobia.
The unique highlight of our afternoon exploring Wanganui, is the 1880's paddle steamer, Otunui, that ran up the river to Taumarunui to connect with the trains to Auckland. In its time, it was part of the only direct travel Wellington-Auckland land route. They're repairing it to steam upriver on Millennium New Year's Eve celebrations.
On the train ride back this is indeed a glorious evening. I'm assessing the scenery critically from the open verandah (at last, and oh so briefly of the guard's van.) There's no glimpses anywhere near of the once vast forests. The early farmers destroyed them all. There is not even tiny wee bits of second growth scrub left in some of the tight gullies we climb heading into tunnels. There was something missing on the way into Wanganui - I'm carefully rechecking my impressions. In the nearly two hour ride to the mainline junction I only glimpse two houses on top of a bank above us - nobody lives in this spacious yellow landscape. Mount Ruapehu is the bold blue lump in the middle distance. Two feathery clouds drift over.
I call my painting Bonny Glen. That's the lettering on the fading shell of an old railway goodshed, securely fenced off on a farmer's land. Will I put it in? Leaving the space at the bottom empty is truthful.
The original text I wrote for the painting was ...
Danger, Kristelle Plimmer's Burmese Siberian wolf hound is dead. I want her to make lots more ear wear for me - me, the caveman dancing the mambo with a hedgehog (Androcies Removes the Thorn from the Lion's Paw). That is fun ...
We'll go to Wanganui on a wee blue train of one carriage and a van, pulled by Sara Lee, the 1916 AB Ian Welch of Mainline Steam rescued from the Queenstown steam engine cannibals for his wife's birthday. There are no people here, no trees, no native bush. Just a shed.
In my bedtime book Nicole Mone's Lost in Translation American Beijing tramp, and her lover doctor search this landscape to find where his wife died in The Cultural Revolution.