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.