Going home: A remembrance of things past in Central Otago

'You can almost feel it in your bones. This was a happy place.' RICHARD BOOCK takes the long trip south to a farmhouse that still seems inhabited by the ghosts of another time.

It's like coming back to an old friend. The straw broom lies propped against the old, straight-backed chair on a veranda flecked with pine needles, feathers and fleece.

A window at the side of the farmhouse yawns open, the front door key dangles from a nail. As the sign says, Welcome to the Maniototo.

The air smells dry, earthy. The sun beats down in true Central Otago fashion, testing the paintwork of the weatherboard villa, heating the iron roof to near cooking-plate temperatures. The dog makes a beeline for the shade of two giant macrocarpas.

The story goes that the farmer's wife planted a tree for each of her two sons when they went to the First World War. What happened to the sons I don't know, but the giants have flourished over the years, towering to more than 30m.

In its prime it must have been some house, surrounded by a show garden complete with a scallop-shell fountain with water fanning from the mouth of a dancing trout.

The kids will always remember that fountain. On parched, arid days when temperatures stifled even the loudmouth starlings, they cavorted under the spray, throwing waterbombs and promising one another certain retribution - until the desert heat had the last word.

The garden is long gone, but the fountain remains, sitting incongruously in its now spartan setting like a signpost pointing to another time. Children played here, you can almost feel it in your bones. This was a happy place.

The front door creaks open and the hallway stares back intensely, perhaps resentful it has been so long. Old jackets, belonging to people who must have once lived here, dangle from the cloak-hooks. There is an enormous hole in the middle of the threadbare carpet. Above it, attached to the wall, is one of those black bakelite telephones with a handle.

Shearers lived here once. They painted the kitchen light blue - or putrid blue, according to the kids. They also came up with the idea of back-to-back shower cubicles in the laundry. Not everyone's cup of tea perhaps, but when you're trying to wash a bunch of little children quickly it certainly can have its uses.

At one time the formal lounge must have swung to the tunes from the old gramophone which sits in the corner. Paint is flaking off an imitation Tudor ceiling and the windows are dressed with faded, ragged blinds. It doesn't matter - there is no one to look in.

The Kyeburn junction lies on the edge on the vast Maniototo Plain, the gateway to Central Otago and about an hour's drive from Alexandra.

It is a moving, soulful place, spectacularly barren yet stunningly beautiful. The size of the sky grabs you first, the reach of the land and simply the great sense of scale.

Maybe it is the light, so clear that it seems possible to define even distant horizons, or it could be the colours - the golden honey of the tussock, the flaming sunsets over Rough Ridge and the moody mauves of dawn and dusk.

There is a spirit to the place. It has a haunting, sometimes disconcerting, ability to echo one's feelings.

A near-lunar landscape, it changes constantly through the day, stimulating or comforting the nerves depending on the angle of sunlight or the strength of the sou'westerly.

Dunedin poet Brian Turner refers to the area in several works, including the multi-part Central Otago which dwells on each of the four seasons. This is "Summer":

Overhead the blue sky

is stretched

tight as a drum.

The hot summer sun

climbs slowly higher,

says, "When I decline

you all decline."

A lobster-legged farm boy

drives a puttering tractor

down the road, dust

billowing in the air.

Sheep graze paddocks

wide as generosity

broom pods explode

with heat from the sun.

I lie on the grass

on the banks

of a water race

and look up into

total emptiness.

Would that I fill it

with all our dreams.

In days gone by Kyeburn made its name as a goldmining town and later as a stage-post for the Central Otago route.

It doesn't exist as a settlement any more, but the area is strewn with the signs of the gold fever days - diggings, old water-races, derelict machinery, a well-filled cemetery.

There are a lot of "burns" (rather than streams or creeks) around here, betraying the Scottish pioneering influence. The Scots loved the waterways but were not overly imaginative when it came to place names. Hence the Kyeburn is quite close to the Pig Burn, Ewe Burn, Wether Burn, Sow Burn, Hog Burn, Hound Burn and - down the road - the inevitable Horse Burn.

There is ample time to appreciate the old-fashioned pleasures of motoring during the drive through State Highway 85 and the Pigroot, a mountain pass that climbs up beside identical-looking peaks named The Brothers before descending into the Maniototo.

On a 45-minute journey inland from Palmerston, there might be two or three cars before the Kyeburn junction, and it is not unusual to complete the entire journey without sighting even one. Sheep, cattle and the odd rabbit, perhaps, but people are in short supply.

It is a good 90-minute drive from Dunedin, the wagon packed with everything imaginable, the dog with her head sticking out the tailgate and the cat meowing at being stuck in a cage.

The first challenge is always the never-ending Kilmog Hill, the steep strip of State Highway 1 which provides a sterling test for any vehicle's cooling system on the way up, and a reasonable examination of its braking ability on the way down.

Below are the sparking waters of Karitane and Waikouaiti beaches, and, farther on, the conical peak of Puketapu, at the doorstep of Palmerston.

From there it's like driving with a talking map, the kids yelling out the familiar landmarks as they come and go, gaining in excitement as we crawl up through the Pigroot.

"I can see Puketapu. There's the stone wall. Look, the house of many chimneys. Yay, The Brothers ... Look how high the Kyeburn is - do you think we'll still be able to swim?"

The turn-off is near the road to Danseys and it is soon time to leave the tarseal, the dust rising like a jet-boat's plume as we head into the middle of nowhere. The sky, as always, takes up about 80 per cent of the view, the only competition coming from the Rock and Pillars on the left, and Rough Ridge on the right.

Then it is down the potholed, often partly submerged driveway, the paddocks of neighbouring farms stretching out on either side as the wagon lurches along, weighed down by people, animals and copious quantities of food and drink.

The dog runs around like a mad thing when we finally unpack, delirious at the thought of so much open land, impending barbecues and opportunities to steal food from defenceless toddlers. The cat is less impressed and remains in a high dudgeon until blackmailed with milk.

Donald the farmhand was at the door. It was 5 pm on New Year's Eve and he was fixing the water-pump which supplies the old house.

He stuck around for a beer afterwards. Only one, of course. Yarned about the difficulties of socialising in an area where the nearest pub was 20km away, and about the dangers of going nuts when you're driving a tractor all day.

He was heading up to Naseby for his New Year's Eve celebrations. Seemed that a couple of pubs were doing a gig together and it was all on for young and old. Said he was taking his sleeping bag. Made a lot of sense, we thought

If there's any place to sleep under a night sky it's here - in the Maniototo.

* Richard Boock is a Herald sports reporter.