Nostalgic wallow with nice scenery

Marcus Lush

A terrifically gloomy sense of loss permeates Marcus Lush's nostalgic trainspotting travelogue, Off the Rails (TV One, Sundays, 7pm).

We know from museums and the fossil record that once upon a time the iron beasts were alive and well and running all around this - to lapse into Lushspeak - great little "egalitarian paradise".

Now the place is full of real-estate-obsessed, chardonnay-swilling yuppies driving SUVs, and Lush may as well be trying to hunt down a moa.

As he noted at the end of last night's second instalment, he'd travelled down the line from Queenstown to Dunedin and, the Kingston Flyer tourist attraction notwithstanding, hadn't even been on one honest, hard-working train. "Go figure," he admonished us.

No wonder the lad is looking out of sorts. In the first episode he wandered around bemoaning the demise of the train in Southland, squinting and muttering grumpily.

With his rumpled, pillow hair and necessary effects in a cardboard box under his arm, he looked like some mentally bewildered unfortunate who'd just got out of bed and realised he'd been let out into the community.

Lush's epic journey in search of a lost era, or a "love story" as it is subtitled, began at homebase in Bluff.

The port may have the Lush stamp of approval as the last bastion of unpretentiousness in the country, but let's be churlish and note that his pad down there still looks rather retro-styly.

Once he'd got on a freight train he managed to cheer up, until he arrived in Invercargill to sigh over the city's deserted railway station, once a busy hub with trains tootling off all over Southland.

Lush wandered off along the empty rails into rural Southland and visited an Ohai eccentric, a fellow railway enthusiast, artist and passionate advocate of the colourful crochet blanket as wall-covering.

Obviously inspired, Lush then treated us to some intriguing performance art telling the story of child murderess Minnie Dean.

Last night's second episode was just as train-challenged and enjoyably bizarre, as Lush denounced the pinot-noir-fuelled wickedness of Queenstown, that Soddom of the South, using a pedal boat on Lake Wakatipu as a pulpit.

Mad Marcus then opted for more traditional travel-show fodder, with a couple of days' cycling on the Central Otago rail trail.

No shiny mountain bikes or Lycra on this journey. Lush was proud to declare his op-shop clothes, old bike with no gears and, in place of the cardboard box, an old bag slung over the shoulders.

Lush sports a quaint op-shop vocab to match the outfits. He pours scorn on modern cliches such as "iconic". In its yuppie-free corners, this land is simply a "neat place".

Finally, in the Taieri Gorge, our host left off ticking off the moneyed villains ruining the country for a moment and really got swept up in the fun of the journey. And who could have watched him swinging through the spectacular gorge on an open-air trip on a jigger without pangs of envy?

Off the Rails is as enjoyable for the landscape as it is for Lush's lugubrious beratings of the superficial, sheep-like middle classes. Nothing goes down so well of a Sunday evening than a good grump about the place going to the dogs and a nostalgic wallow with nice scenery.