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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 3, Issue 9 (January 1, 1929)

A Coach Party

A Coach Party

We were a mixed freight when we boarded the coach at half-past seven in the morning. Those present included a lady schoolteacher, a bush contractor, a station cook, a shearer, and a commercial traveller. It is on record that no journey has ever been made, either on foot, wheel or wing, without a commercial traveller being among those present.

The last alcoholic oasis before entering the thirsty King Country is Urenui. Here every male passenger was imbued with the spirit which has made it possible for a camel to place sufficient moisture in cold storage to last it across the desert.

“To beer or not to beer,” does not apply here; everyone “beers.”

If there had ever been any metal on the road which winds over Mount Messenger it had long since disappeared beneath the mud, which reached almost to the taunted swingletrees. The incline and the mud combined to make the ascent a cruel one for the horses, and the male passengers were ordered to walk to the top. The only footpath was a comparatively hard strip on the extreme edge of the road (about a foot in width), from which we could look down on to the tops of the trees in the gullies below. It was here that we lost the station cook. When he boarded the coach at Waitara the neck of a whisky bottle had obtruded itself from his pocket, and during the journey the whisky had been transferred from the bottle to the interior of the cook. In the process of absorption he had become something of a burden, the delusion that he was Bob Fitzsimmons and Gentleman Jim Corbett combined, gaining strength with the bottle's exhaustion.

It was not until we congregated at the top of the mountain that he was missed.

”'E'll ‘ave to walk, blarst ‘im,” snorted the “coachey,” and we skidded down the other side of the mountain without him. He arrived two days later with dry fern in his hair and a generous portion of New Zealand on his clothes.

It was after we had crossed the mountain that the schoolteacher came into prominence. Her dress-basket eluded its lashings and bounded on to the road, where it burst asunder and scattered its contents in a most immodest manner. The shearer and the C.T. illustrated the fact that the age of chivalry is not dead, but it was an embarrassing time for all concerned. Sufficient it is to say that those were the days when ladies really Did wear clothes, and the schoolteacher possessed at least “two of Everything.”

There were in those days two methods of crossing the Mokau River, but most people preferred to cross on the punt as there was no bridge. There is something attractive—especially to a Scot—in crossing page 13 a river on a coach on a punt; it smacks of getting two rides for one fare—hoots! Apparently something had come unstuck in the harness department during the journey, for when we essayed to pull off the punt and “coachey” shouted “R-r-r-r-umph Darky, r-r-r-r-umph Bess,” only the leader marched off and left the rest of the team standing. “Coachey” was jerked off his box and came to rest with a hand on the rump of each of the “polers.” Only a bullock would be equal to translating what “coachey” said.

Noah established Henley-on-the-Mount.

Noah established Henley-on-the-Mount.

By the time we neared Awakino, where the road literally hangs on the edge of the cliffs, I was the sole survivor of the original freight. We had dropped the others off at different points along the road.

Here “coachey” met a friend, and handed over the ribbons while he retired to the interior of the coach for refreshment and repose. The friend had imbibed just sufficiently deeply to incite him to the belief that he was the incarnation of Desperado Dick, the daredevil driver of the Rockies, for he cursed the team into a gallop, and defied the laws of gravity along the edge of the cliff. We were seldom on two wheels at once, and never on four. I gazed passionately, straight down into the Tasman, and felt the wild waves already closing over my ears. As far as Daredevil Dick was concerned the road was perfectly straight, flat and smooth. He refused to believe otherwise, and contemptuously ignored the existence of bends, hills and holes. The experience was akin to a combination of logrolling, riding the air-pockets, and “asking father's consent.”

Eventually, thanks to the Power which looks after, infants and “drunks,” we reached our destination in one piece.