New Zealand history is apparently fashionable at present.
In the midst of a chilly winter I've spent the past three weeks organising four decades of my photos into albums.
I wrote this account in 2006 from my rented, uninsulated, concrete-block bedsit in Church Bay, Christchurch.
Saturday, March 25, 2006 dawned grey and wet. The public events calendar was busy. As I recall, I had a choice of activities on land, sea or sky. I'd seen runners and cyclists before. They'd held me up often enough on their practice circuits round the Lyttelton harbour bays. The Wigram Classics Airshow was colourful when I videoed it a year or two ago, when I first shifted here. I opted for agricultural pursuits and headed north from Church Bay to Rangiora. The skies hung sombre, grey and with an autumn hue. After an hour I reached the showgrounds where roadsides and paddocks lay cluttered with cars and people.
The rain, thankfully, had eased off and I knew I could work my cameras without an umbrella. I parked the car by the gate to the grounds on the wrong side of a line of orange road-marker witches' hats, behind a Land Cruiser whose owner obviously had similar thoughts about lugging tote bag and tripod over damp mud.
This was the "Burrell Special" 2006 Traction Engine Rally. This was the largest rally of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere and it would run in Rangiora from March 24 to 26.
Over the gorse hedge the sight that greeted me was reminiscent of Blake's Jerusalem and England's dark satanic mills. The air was thick with black soot, heavy skeins of smoke and the clank of metal striking metal, the belch of steam mixed with whining saw blades cutting timber, human chatter, and the distant melody of fairground music. I paid my entry fee to the man in the white coat at the gate and bought a $5 commemorative booklet. This gave me a programme of events and a potted history of every traction engine present, as well as some that didn't arrive. In addition to the 75 real traction engines there were model, miniature and vintage vehicles, Clydesdale horses, horse-drawn carts, wagons, gigs, modern big-rig trucks, tractors and agricultural equipment. This was a moving- picture showcase of horsepower and human endeavour spanning a century or so of New Zealand heritage.
Overhead a helicopter demonstrated the use of a monsoon bucket and the Westpac rescue helicopter arrived to take part in a fire service motor accident scene demonstration, where the jaws of life were used to open a Honda City as if it were a tin can. Why they needed jaws of life to do this I do not know. I worked briefly as a mechanic several years ago in a garage. Changing the oil in a Honda Civic I noted how flimsy the bonnet was. I could flap it like damp wrapping paper. I owned a 1962 Ford Consul 315 at the time with one-eighth- inch-thick steel panels. Solid brute strength has been replaced with flimsy bendable technology. Is that subtlety and finesse, or blatant cutting of corners?
I shot footage of this extraction demonstration from a tripod-mounted camera. It was a frustrating waste of time. The firefighters consistently huddled around door openings with equipment and crash victims, presenting their backsides to the viewing public and blocking any view of the work they were doing. This continued despite the commentator's request for them to periodically stand aside and face the audience so we could understand the progress being made. After all, was this a demonstration or not? The official photographer was also annoyingly intrusive. He ran around poking his camera lens into every nook and cranny in and around the car, blocking my shot and our view. I can well understand why photojournalists are banned from such scenes and tabloid reporters are so disliked. Shooting the action takes on a whole new meaning. I was with the crowd 50m away and my focus was totally distracted. Of far more interest to me were the traction engines with their iron and brass, their decorations and bright colours, their grumbling and chortling snorts and whistles, their whirring wheels and pumping pistons.
These working machines had come from far and wide, and as far away as England. Demonstrations throughout the day included pile driving, heavy haulage, sawmilling, chaffing, cutting and threshing. I captured footage of all this as well as romantic shots from below the grass line of passing machines. To buy one of these elegant beasts is not cheap. You need a good $120,000 to begin. The most expensive showpiece of the day was the Burrell Showman Traction Engine and the Golden Horses Roundabout. The combined value of these two magnificent colourful machines is $2.5 million. They were shipped from the UK especially for this rally.
New Zealand seems to be getting smaller every time I look. I was surprised to find that the official videographer for this event came from the Hutt Valley and went to church with me there 15 years ago. I was also interested to learn that Toll Rail transported at least four of these engines to the rally. This would have been standard practice when they originally left the factory. The front wheels of these engines were removed to lower the funnels because the funnels get in the way. We simply cannot have perfectly good New Zealand Railway brick smashed by ancient Victorian steel, can we? The day wore on. The grand parade came and went.
The public drifted home. A quiet tranquillity settled over the showgrounds. Clydesdales munched hay. The owners and operators retired to their caravans and luxury motorhomes for the night, their charges parked in neat rows, put to bed like honest workhorses, under their canvas covers. I was able to take uncluttered footage of one or two still being manoeuvred, like the rare steamroller, and the vintage trucks attending the pile-driving rig. In the photographic exhibition marquee, displays of sepia, black-and-white images, coloured prints and lithographs depicted this character-filled era, when steam and soot reigned supreme.
Dusk was falling as I left Rangiora. A lone traction engine towing a wagonload of full chaff sacks and bearing a driver, accompanied by several children, made its clanking way past me in the opposite direction, heading for home and hearth. As I drove south the sun glowed red gold on the western horizon and the remains of the day faded into darkness.
'We want to take a very detailed specific look at what Whanganui needs' – Chris Bishop.