The Station at Mawheraiti

You want to know about the station, do you? Not many folk stop here anymore. Not for the hotel even, never mind the station. Now look, it’s not much but that station was something, I tell you. She was the centre of this place. Nothing much ever happened here, but everything that did, happened there. Now, I won’t smite you. No, not for your lack of kind. I’ll just tell you how it was and that will be that. You might not think much, being from away, but I tell you it was important to us.

That station, she was our place. She let us know we were connected. She was also the best sight of home when you’re coming back too. She made you know where you were. Why all kinds of things happened in that little station, with her coal stove and clicking switch-box. She was warm and alive and shared our lives with us.

Like the time Eleanor, who was panning up Cuthbert’s creek found a Gloryhole next to an old Mac-tree. She set off from the station to Greymouth to trade her gold. No one ever knew how much she got, but five men came courting her that summer and she made pies for everyone here all winter long and never asked for nothing for them.

Then three, maybe sometimes four times a year, some folks would come out to the station on Thursday. Dressed in their Sunday best, they’d be heading to Greymouth to do some banking or some shopping or the Cricket for some or just the Workingman’s.

Not for Billy Boots though. No, his name wasn’t Boots, it was Carterage, ‘cept we all called him Billy Boots for his boots. He had a very fine pair of boots that came all the ways from Lancashire, England. Every time he’d be at the station he be wearing his boots, all shined and gleaming. In the winter, he would rest them on the side of the coal stove and after a time you could smell the boot black and leather all though the station.

Vain he was, my sister would tell me. She’d half put up with his talk all the way to Red Jacks, where he’d go to play his fiddle at the Diamond's Hotel. One time at Christmas, and we all still sat in the station, he had his fiddle and we all sang and when Dead-eye got there we were all still singing and we sang all the way the Red Jacks, where Billy got off. I remember that day like it was yesterday. Everyone I knew must have left that day on the train. Takes you back, don’t it?

You’d go there and set the flag for Dead-eye Fred. He’d bring that old Number 49 Engine up with the brakes rattling and stream shooting out everywhere. He never blew the whistle though, even if the New Zealand Railway Manual said he had to. No sir, not once, not in our place. You go ask him and he will tell you, that Jenny McLeish has six young babies, and she needs all the rest she can get. She don’t need no train whistle in her life.

Most folks knew Fred had a sweet-on for Jenny McLeish, even though she was quite taken. And Fred never married neither. He’d say his engine was his bride and he liked to be with her all the time, listening to her breathe and complain. Some folk recon he slept in the cab at the end of the line, but he would never talk about that. Private railroad business he would say and you knew he was done talking.

Well, the coal stove is gone now. The switch box all torn out. I replaced that window there not, well, long ago. Government don’t care. No paint. They say no trains no paint. What’s the use of a station? It’s all gone modern. Just coal trains now. They don’t stop; just go on through like we were never here. Don’t care for the lives we had, the lives we made here. Past is past, I guess.

And I remember when Tulip lost her second son in the mine. All of us were at the station to meet her when she came back. I still can’t forget the look on her face. Dead-eye blew the whistle that day. He blew it long and sorrowful, all the way up round the curve. Best tribute we would give. Old 49 wept for that boy. We all did.

It’s enough to break your heart to think about those days gone now.

‘nuff said.