A few more weekends went by of work and I headed off on a tramp by myself. I was ready to test my abilities and my gear and needed some time just to myself I think. I headed up the Ryalite Ridge track to the Woolshed Creek Hut, which is behind Mt. Somers. It was a pretty windy but clear day with a mild Norwester blowing, but it made for a very exciting trip of the ridge. It was just me and my headphones and some great tunes and just as I topped the ridge to view the far off glaciers A Big Old Sun from the Into the Wild soundtrack started playing and I had a moment with the mountains. Oh, and an apple. I stopped at the Woolshed Creek hut for some lunch and cup of tea, then headed back along the Miner’s track determined to memorize the lyrics for the 2 songs I had to sing as the lead vocal with the Possum’s. Never being much of a singer, and always hearing the tune first and not the words of a song, I have always found it hard to remember words. People that can come up with songs they haven’t sung in YEARS and remember all the lyrics get lots of respect in my book. By the time I reached Merino in the car park I think had them down, only have scared 2 runners that I passed along the way!
Having gone by myself, Amy and Alex from work were my emergency crew. They had invited me over for dinner so that if I didn’t make it around or they didn’t hear from me they would come looking for me along the trail somewhere. Its always good to have people looking out for you!!
Cow stuff: Beware!
It was around this time that calving was slowing down but metrichecking was in full swing. This is a little metal rod with a rubber end that is used to check if a cow is ‘dirty’ or has subclinical infections in her uterus after calving. We do this prior to mating season starts to make sure they are ready to get pregnant when it all starts. One day we had 1000 cows scheduled to check in the afternoon and I also had a Possum rehearsal scheduled that evening. By the time we finished at 5:45pm, there was no way I was going to make it to Christchurch for any kind of productive practice so I had to call the guys and cancel. Being the city boys they are they found it extremely funny but strange at the same time that I had this particular set-back. Somehow I knew it would come back to haunt me.
After a few months of practicing and getting me up to speed, it was finally time for our first real gig together at the Harbour Light Theater in Lyttleton, just outside Christchurch. The boys and their other fiddler had played there multiple times but it was going to be my first liver performance as well as my first time playing with a plugged in fiddle. A guy I knew from one of the sessions is a local luthier and I purchased an L.R. Baggs fiddle pick-up from the US (saved $150 by getting online and shipped rather than from NZ) and had him set it up. I had never played on a pick-up before so I was a bit unused to how I would sound through the mic as well as hearing myself through the monitor speakers. Sound check went well, they guys knowing much more about how to tweak their instruments and telling Russel, the sound guy what he needed, but after 60min of Bryz talking megahertz and frequencies I had pretty much lost the plot and didn’t know what was going on. All I knew was that I could hear my fiddle through the monitor and it sounded cool with that electric sound and a great bass end… gotta love some good bass end.
The time finally came to start the show and we all toasted to a great gig in the back with some Old Crow Whiskey… not too much to hinder us but just enough to take the edge off. We started off well, I was a bit nervous singing but made it through with only a few lyrical adjustments! At the intermission we had a few more sips of the ol’ whiskey and headed back to the stage, but I think we had more whiskey than we realized and the boys had more than I did, especially Keith. The second half was more relaxed, and when we sang our song ‘Whiskey in my Whiskey’ we couldn’t have sung anything more true. At one point, I started off a tune in the wrong key, Keith sand an entire song repeating one verse through the whole thing, while we all just trying to vamp through it and figure out where he was… seeing no end to his confusion, somehow we just ended it, had a laugh with the audience and started over with a new song. It was still a great show over all, I made a few hundred bucks, but that wasn’t really important. It was just a BLAST making music with people again and playing for an audience. It is such an adrenaline rush, and you end with an amazing high. Who needs drugs when you have music!!
I stayed at Sean’s place that night in beautiful Sumner, and arriving in the dark I had no idea what was in store for me in the morning. I woke up to the sound of waves crashing on the shore, and a huge picture window view of Taylor’s Mistake beach in the port hills. They treated me to some great coffee and breakfast in the morning before we debriefed on the gig. I spent the day lazing around Christchurch running some errands and caught a film at one of the theaters. I met Craig from work, and his buddies at a bar north of town that was supposedly having an Oktoberfest party with German food and beer. It turned out to be more of a young 20’s meat market drunk fest, while watching V8 racing on TV and having to wait 20min to get served a beer at the bar. I had a drink and a BBQ sandwich that didn’t taste too German and promptly left. With the stress of the gig over, I planned on totally vegging out with a movie and some couch time.
As a bit of a side story, the next week I had my most rewarding calving of the season and probably my career thus far, just because of the events surrounding it. As a vet working for farms, we’re usually only called when things are going poorly, rightly so as we have the knowledge and the tools to make the final decision if need be or at least make the process more bearable for all parties involved. That usually means that in the end we don’t get a live calf a high percentage of the time, and there’s usually lots of care needed for the mother afterward. I was called out to this woman’s farm, a small mostly beef cattle farm that pretty much picks up stray or unwanted cattle and raises them for whatever potential they might achieve. The call was for a jersey heifer that gotten bred by accident as a 5mo old calf, ‘an oops’ breeding. This happens in the animal world with intact bulls running around and it can end in tears if there is too much of a size difference. The woman was distraught and worried a c-section was going to be needed, but I thought we’d just give her the benefit of the doubt and just see how things went. 20min later with some gently pulling with just my hands and letting Mom help us, we delivered a tiny little jersey heifer calf that was quiet happy and Mom was too. The woman teary eyed, gave me a big hug and was so thankful for the good result as well as my gentleness. Weeks later I was back to look at an unrelated case and got to see the wee little calf running around nursing off her teenage mother, both happy as. Those are the cases that can really make your day, even though it was as simple as pulling a calf by hand without the aid of my drugs or mechanical intervention.
The next weekend I wanted to go for another tramp so I started recruiting people, Jane another vet from work and her cousin Ross decided to come with me and we went up Little Mt. Peel along the south ridge during a very warm but very windy Norwester. The track takes about 3 hrs., is very steep and very exposed with little tree coverage for but it was a great climb and was appreciated our lunch and chocolate at the shelter on top before heading back down the Deer spur track. On our way back we stopped at the Tinwald tavern for a drink before they took me home. Was a great day out. Just about down off the mountain, Amy and Alex called to see where I was and if I could pick them up from the bus station. Their van’s battery had died about 3 hours north of Christchurch while they were out tramping. They had been rescued by a man who took them as far as Kaiapoi where they bought a car battery, but not being able to connect it they bused it back to Ashburton. Poor old Gordon the van, he’s been through a lot this year.
The end of October Barrie, the accordion player from the Irish session that had adopted Eilis and I, told us about a festival in Cardrona, a little skiing village north of Queenstown. It was mostly a singer/songwriter festival but they were saying they needed some musicians so we tagged along. I had to wait till work was over to start driving so Eilis met me in Timaru where we parked and had supper with one of her friends and then headed to Cardrona arriving at 1am. Barrie was bringing us a tent to sleep in so upon arriving we asked the festival goers that were still going strong if they knew Barrie and if they knew anything about a tent set up for two girls arriving late. A bad choice of words, as we immediately had 3 offers to sleep in some of the mens tents that were staggering around the place. A woman came up to us and mentioned there was a tent that had a sign-post with a little flashing bike light, could that be it? Sure enough Barrie had manufactured us a sign along with our tent and we topped it off with an Irish flag on top that Eilis had brought. We quickly realized the next day that were just about the youngest people there by about 25-40 years besides some of the folkies that had brought their children, and that it was indeed a very folkie, folk festival. I’d say about a third of the people there were permanent ‘campervan’ people, that live in campervans, moving from place to place or just on one of the numerous lakes around NZ. Basically gypsies. Very nice people, but a bit odd at the same time, one old timer with lots of army surplus gear and clothing kept chatting to us about the evils of government, manufacturing, and farming while I had to bite my tongue and keep quite most of the time, knowing arguing with the man was futile and wasn’t going to change his mind. Barrie, Eilis and I stole away a few times during the festival to play tunes together and put a set of tunes together for the final concert that is made up of people from the festival showcasing their songs. We had a blast anyway, and it was very relaxing just to camp and chill. They had a poetry reading session that was absolutely hilarious, as most of them were comedic, and the evening concerts showcased the main acts that had been invited. Eric Bogle, a well known Scottish singer/songwriter now living in Australia, and an amazing guitar player named Graham that just blew me away with his playing.
It was also about this time when poor Merino’s engine started to make noise. I took her in to see Gary, the mechanic the vet clinic uses, and he gave me the bad news that a head gasket was going and that the radiator was also plugged up tight, which likely contributed to the engine crapping out. So I was at the festival Merino was in the shop getting some well deserved TLC and it came at the bargain price of $1400. Ouch, but it had to be done. Only a few more months to go!
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| tramp to Woolshed Creek hut |
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| LAMBS!!!! |
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| The Johnny Possum Band! |
