Hick kid on a full platform,
Palmerston North emblazoned
on a smoke stained sign,
empty cups of tea on seats
where passengers sat,
the cold at 8.30pm evident
as Mum and Dad wave me off,
Mums tears hidden by a warm smile
back to Auckland for me,
young sailor heading back to work.

The sounds of carriages graunch together
as the locomotive takes the slack
and pulls out of the station, slowly
then building as city lights give in to
scattered splatterings of farms, dark
in the night, I sit on hardened worn
leather and wood, sparse, uncomfortable
my bed for the night, and the smell
of diesel fumes waft down the carriage
and starts to drift people off to sleep.

All the carriages are full, young, old
and all those in between, and I am in
a carriage of quiet, not my scene
for the long journey ahead, so I stand
and walk back, back to the rear carriages
the party buses, "gats" out
the songs flowing with amber fluid
and the harder stuff, to fight the cold,
I sit, unfold my prize, 26 ounces
of black gold, Coruba rum, and they strum,

Fielding.... Hunterville....Utuku........
strumming songs from the Maori Hit Parade,
Ten Guitars, Sheryl Moana Marie, and we
are all friends on the journey of night,
cold night and soon the bottle empties
warming my vocals and now friendships,

Taihape.......
and a mad dash for all to the Taihape Hotel,
fighting your way through the Ten O'clock melee
of Holden V8's and Black Power boys
crowding the pub with their ever presence,
their place, but we nightly invaders struggle
(always a struggle), to do it in the 14 minutes
those who drank tea took to eat a pie
and down their Railways Cup brew,
but we all seemed to make it, tea and booze
and the rest who spent the time to snooze.

Waiouru.....
and the cold hits you, as soldiers came and went
round the vast darkness of a mountain asleep
and Ohakune, the compulsory stop
where crews changed, northbound/southbound
and the party went on, liquid fire.

National Park..........
I had never seen it , until I drove it one day,
years later on the daylight railcar,
Raurimu Spiral, feat of engineering
and kiwi ingenuity, round and round
and up and down, a splendour once viewed,

Taumaranui........Te Kuiti.........Otorohonga.......
towns that existed due to the very rails
that passed through them, stock towns
heartland New Zealand, but darkened by
the night trains ritual, and sleeping,
yet the party wore on as the grog dies,

Te Awamutu....... Hamilton......... Ngauruawahia.........
and the clickety click of bogeys on the bridge
over the mighty Waikato soon had sleep
burgeoning and the rest of the trip was
one of comfort, booze addled comfort
and to this day I look at those seats, and wonder

Huntly........ Pokeno........... Papakura..........
places I slept through, and never met,
and then the stop, the silence, Auckland
and the early morning bustle of light and
commuter traffic, life again, and work so soon
and I have survived another trip on the train.

Times Recommends

• Superfreakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• Vincent van Gogh’s letters show the soul of the artist