Steam, smut and storms

As we pulled into the last station of the day, the chap across the aisle finally managed to slide his window shut and grinned. "Any day behind steam is a good day". How right he was.

Several times a year, a bunch of enthusiasts from the Australian Railway Historical Society run steam excursions out of Brisbane. I wouldn't say I'm a big steam enthusiast - some of the middle-aged blokes were almost dribbling with excitement - but a ride up the coast in a historic steam train is a good way to spend a Saturday.

The trip went up to the town of Landsborough, on the Sunshine Coast (which is a district, so Landsborough isn't on the actual coast!) There were a couple of add-on trips offered as well, and I opted for a boat trip along the waterway between Bribie Island and the Mainland. It's a nature reserve, and popular with fishermen, boaties and people who just want to spend their Saturday at the beach.

"The train arriving on Platform 10 is noisy, steamy, smokey and quite possibly alive!"

"Have you seen a seagull?" "No." "How about a shag then?"

The resort town of Caloundra, at the head of the passage between the Mainland and Bribie Island.

Bribie Island. Sand, trees and weather.

A typical SE Queensland afternoon storm.

Another good way to spend a Saturday.

After a couple of hours it was back to the train and home. My carriage, which had been at the back on the way up, was now at the front. With no air conditioning it was a choice between hot or sooty... Triumph owners aren't afraid of a bit of dirt though, so it was windows open all the way. Or at least until we hit the storm front we'd been watching from the water. And the old wooden carriages were as waterproof as the day they were made!

(Triumph news: The Herald's diff has been rebuilt with an alloy case. I'll try and pick it up this week, or next Saturday at the latest. And the GT6 is painted! I've arranged an enclosed truck to bring it the 800km south, probably in a couple of weeks.)

40 years up in the air

What do you get for a brother at Christmas when he already has enough junk stuff for any three normal people? Well, I shouted my brother Tim a helicopter flight over Brisbane... and because the ticket was for two, I came along as well.

The helicopter we rode in is a 1971 Bell47G. Think M*A*S*H and you've got it. It's essentially a plexiglass bubble, engine and rotor blades. No doors, but thankfully bloody good seat belts!

Taking off from Archerfield. Please excuse the three hairy legs, but this shot shows how open the cockpit is. Plexi ahead, open air to the right, ground 900ft straight down.

 Bell 47 instruments. The engine is a six cylinder piston engine, with enough power to climb to 12,000ft. Andy, the pilot, tested this once by taking it past the summit of Mt Cook in NZ. Just.

No wonder I get lost in Brisbane! 

The Heart of Brisbane, with the Story Bridge. The river's slightly browner than usual due to wet season rains upstream. It's never what you'd call clear though. 

The Gabba, from almost directly overhead. Now would NOT be a good time to drop the camera.

Botanic Gardens, South Bank to the left. 

Tim and Andy over St Lucia and the University of Queensland. 

We want to go again! Back at Archerfield.

Close but no cigar

The GT6 won't be home for Christmas. It's close - the doors and hatch are back on - but Joe's struggling with panel gaps around the bonnet. The entire front section of a GT6 is a single clamshell-style assembly, and mine needed a lot of dents to be hammered out.

To start with we need to sort out the bonnet hinges. The whole front end pivots on two bolts as part of an adjustable hinge setup. It's a long time since I took the car apart, so I'll need to dig out some parts manuals and diagrams and work out where the bushes and washers go. At the moment it has a couple of centimetres' play! The rear end of the bonnet is located on the bulkhead with rubber cones and latches and again, it's no use trying to get the alignment right until they're fitted.

The doors and hatch fit very well, with no tweaking required. That was one of the positives about this car - it was worn out, dented and roasted by years parked up in the sun, but none of the outer panels had any significant rust. Only portions of the floor needed replacing. The wings, doors and sills are the same ones on the car when it rolled out of the Triumph factory.

At the moment the Mallard Missile's got its bum in the air. It should settle once the glass, interior and fuel tank are fitted, but US-spec GT6s seem to have sat higher than their UK counterparts. It's already got a 1" lowering block under the spring, and if it doesn't settle down enough with some weight in the back, the spring will need to be reset.

The left front wing's gaps are good, but it needs its cones and latches to push the bottom out a bit.

The bulkhead gap's fairly regular, but the right hand door gap needs to be reduced. Hopefully it'll close up when the bonnet's better located.

My visit to the GT6 was on the way home from two weeks in the Queensland summer sun. Summer up there is also the wet season, so think 36C and thunderstorms. The photo's not been tweaked - green thunder clouds mean hail!

High altitude ice clouds mean it's going to be a clear, hot day. This photo was taken about 9am, when it was already about 30C!

Meanwhile, the Herald's snoozing in the garage. When I started my new job in Brisbane I used it to commute, a daily twenty-mile round trip (the Herald doesn't think in kilometres). Stop-start driving's different to steady cruising on country roads, and after a couple of weeks the diff pinion seal let go. Of course I didn't notice until the diff started whining, on the last banked bend leading onto the Gateway Bridge. Sigh. Fresh oil quietened it a bit but it's obviously not healthy any more. So a new-old-stock crown wheel and pinion, bearings, gaskets and seals are on their way from the UK, along with an alloy case which increases the oil capacity. I'll get it rebuilt by a specialist, to make sure the new gears mesh smoothly. I want the new diff to be as quiet as the old one was.

Green Energy

After 14 months at the body shop, my GT6 is almost ready to collect. It was delivered in September last year, stripped of paint and showing nearly forty years of accumulated dents and battle scars. Joe's welded up a hole inflicted by a forklift, fitted a new section of bulkhead, a dashboard frame and floor pan, and hammered and shrunk dents from every panel (including the roof!). 

Painting the body, though, was delayed by insurance work and a shortage of labour. I haven't been in Mackay in a couple of months, but asked my brother to stop in on his way to the mines. And sitting in the tropical sun, waiting for its doors, was the Mallard Missile.

Word is, it'll be home for Christmas...

  

All At Sea

When you think of the beach, you probably think of blue skies, blue seas and waves lapping on long stretches of golden sand. Well, all that's alright I s'pose...

The Kaikoura coast looking northwards. Straight from a tourist brochure...

Moeraki Boulders, on the way back north to Christchurch. Freaky geology anyone?

Manuherikia Arm, Marlborough Sounds.

The Sounds are flooded valleys, with hundreds of hidden bays and inlets, framed by dark, bush-covered hills. One of my favourite places, rain or shine.

 

Ngakuta Bay, Marlborough Sounds.

Cook Strait. Sometimes one of the most violent stretches of water in the world, but thankfully not today.

Recovery

I'm originally from Christchurch. A lot of visitors to New Zealand fly in or out through Christchurch, and many have lingered for a day or so to admire buildings and gardens influenced by its nineteenth century English founders. In February this year, Christchurch was made momentarily famous by an earthquake which killed 181 people and levelled large tracts of the central city and eastern suburbs. I flew back for a few days in April, but with most of the inner city cordoned off, I found it hard to get a sense of the scale of destruction. What I could see was incredible. Roads buckled, bridges destroyed, houses falling into the streets. People were keeping calm and carrying on, but remained deeply shocked, and upset anew every time an aftershock rumbled beneath their feet.

Six months on, a cold and hard winter has given way to spring. The ground has quietened if not stilled, and most of the worst damaged buildings have been demolished. I don't want to give the impression that everything's back to normal. Thousands of people have permanently left, and thousands more are in limbo as the government and insurance companies argue over whether and how to repair houses. Entire suburbs built on unstable ground may be bulldozed and turned into parkland. Businesses have migrated to the western suburbs and the traffic is far worse than I remember it. But it felt as though the city was turning a corner.

The last weekend in October was notable because the first small section of the inner city was reopened. A new City Mall had been built from shipping containers, and locals flooded in to see. I was in town after finishing the Rail Trail, so went along as well.

The new City Mall. Most of the buildings lining this section collapsed during the February quake, killing and injuring scores of lunchtime shoppers and workers. It was fitting, then, that this was the first area of the "Red Zone" to be reopened. The containers may be temporary and symbolic, but it felt good to be there.

Lichfield St. Once upon a time, this vacant site housed Fazzaz - part classic car salesroom, part auto museum, part motoring model and magazine shop. And one of my favourite parts of Christchurch.

Clarendon Towers, one of the tallest remaining buildings, was badly damaged and may yet be demolished (or 'deconstructed', a word much in vogue these days).

The Canterbury Provincial Council Buildings, like many late nineteenth century buildings, were built in the Gothic Revival style. And although appearing to have been hewn from the earth itself and strong as the roots of mountains, they crumbled.

The Dux De Lux, a famous bar and restaurant, is part of the Arts Centre. It was famous for brewing its own beer, and brilliant live music. Generations of students have misbehaved here into the small hours (me too!) Hopefully it'll get rebuilt, but the structural damage is apparently far worse than it appears from the outside.

Untouched my a@$e!

The botanic gardens. As in the City Mall, spring has produced a riot of colour.

On yer bike!

Last month's exciting episode had me finishing a job and driving the Herald back to Brisbane. I negotiated a few weeks break before starting my next job, as some friends had invited me on a re-re-re-cycle of the Otago Rail Trail, back in New Zealand. It was my fourth time on the Trail in about ten years - yes, it really is that good!

 I won't dissect the Trail - there are plenty of websites that explain its history and what cyclists face on each section. Instead, I'll tell you why I like it - stunning, ever-changing scenery rolling by, a nice easy trail to ride on, spectacular views from places away from any road access. Silence, apart from the crunch of gravel under your tyres. The smell of wild thyme on sunny hillsides, humming with bees. Great places to stop for an emergency ice cream or beer. Soft beds and big dinners. And best of all, the banter of friends comparing their favourite parts of that day's ride.

The drive south from Christchurch was split into two days so that we could stop at Lake Tekapo. A southerly storm the day before had dumped snow right down to the lake shore. 

My new mountain bike. My old bike is now in Brisbane, so I bought another. Chances are, it'll be back to Otago before too long.

Wild thyme, smelling divine.

The Manuherikia Viaduct, ageing gracefully.

Emergency snack attack!

The Poolburn Viaduct.

This good shed was the subject of a famous painting by local artist Grahame Sydney. When the rail line closed it was relocated, but it was eventually returned to Wedderburn. No Rail Trail is complete without a photo of the green shed.

Generations of travellers on the rail line threw apple cores out the carriage window, and now the track is lined with numerous apple trees. 

Schist, a rock once baked and twisted kilometres beneath the earth's surface, meets ice clouds twisting kilometres up in a cold Spring sky. 

The shape of the landscape causes this lenticular cloud, known as the Taieri Pet.