The G'day Country Dedux: An Illustrated Rail Journey Back into NZ

By David McGill (Silver Owl Press, RRP $34.95)

You don't have to be a train buff to enjoy this book, though if you have memories of joyful plumes of smoke chugging across the landscape, or of running to stand under a viaduct (Caroline Bay) as a hissing spitting train thunders by overhead, it helps. (In my opinion diesel doesn't cut it.)

Author David McGill is passionate about what remains of NZ Rail and pulls no punches at the various (ill-informed?) political decisions that had so many branch (and main) lines closed in favour of private enterprise and road transport, not to mention all the "sleepers", guardsmen and beautifully uniformed tea ladies dispensing tea in large Temuka cups who have all disappeared as well. Photos of derelict railway stations tell their own tale.

Polemics aside, like all good travel books it is the people met along the way that make a journey come alive. McGill is detailed and generous with their stories. It is a slice of life, though not necessarily a Slice of Heaven, of the G'Day Country (in the good old days?) only 20 years ago. His misadventures in various hostelries and eateries also capture the flavour of the day with a dry wit.

This is a reprint of McGill's 1985 journey from The Far North to Bluff, with the addition of train-lover and railway worker Micheal O'Leary's poems. If you missed it the first time round give this updated version a go. It might make you cross but it will certainly also make you laugh.

A very enjoyable and thought-provoking read for a lazy Sunday afternoon.

- © Fairfax NZ News