ON THE CREAM WAGON.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 224, 21 September 1932, Page 6

ON THE CREAM WAGON.

* A SPRING SKETCH. (By BARBARA A. KERR.) In days gone by the cream wagon was recognised a® a reliable means of transit. In the outback districts tlie roughest roads and the muddiest tracks offered, no hindrance to th© cream wagon with its team of eteady-pulling horses. It was often used by country women when visiting their distant neighbours, for, of course, everybody supplied cream and had cans sent back empty on the return load, so that everybody came into touch with the wagon. Nowadays, in many districts, the service car has robbed the cream wagon of its passengers. However, there still remain regions into which the service car does not care to penetrate —districts where the roads lead to nowhere in particHlar, and the hill country that lies far back from the main road. So in such lonely places we are sometimes glad to have the assurance that the cream wagon jogs down to the road end and back three times a week.

It was a fresh spring morning when I took my seat on the old farm sledge on which the cream was being taken to the stand, a anile distant. The flighty mare, already feeling the joyous effects of spring, made eaey work of pulling the smooth-running sledge with its load of cream. Gliding along a clay road behind a spirited horse is an exhilarating experience on a bright morning in September/ the freshest month in all the year. Too - soon the ride was ended, the cream placed on its own particular stand, and the bay mare headed for home, while I waited for the cream wagbn. The stand was beneath the shadow of a bush-covered range from which the blue mist haze had not yet been driven, for the sun is slow in banishing the mist from deep gullies that run down to the west. A quail called plaintively to her mate across tho road, a riroriro sang its tremulous song, and high above earth larks carolled a glad greeting to the sun. There were no voices or noises other than Nature's own to break the silence until the gay jingle of chains and the rattle of iron wheels was heard in the distance. Then the steady clip-clop of trotting horses' feet sounded on the metal, and the cheery whistle hinted that, as usual, the driver was in a good mood. Before the wagon appeared round a bend we knew there were not many cans on boa I'd, for they, too, rattled loudly.

There was no need to ask for a lift. "Going into town?" was the driver's greeting, as he jumped out to collect the waiting cream. "Hop in!" he said. Not a hop but a cliuib was necessary before one was perched up on the driver's .seat. He apologised for the comfortless state of the wagon where the seat was cushioned with a folded grain sack, suggesting that the vehicle was almost as heavy and old-fashioned as the covered wagons used in pioneering days in America. It was, in fact, a pioneering wagon, for nobodv knew how long it had been on the run, carrying cream to one of the earliest established factories in the North, driven by the present driver's father. The driver himself was a pleasant-faced young man, broad-shouldered and very tall, a typical young New Zealand farmer. He vtas frankly interested in his passenger's affairs, and as we had been pupils together at the little backblocks school on the hill nobody objected to an exchange of news. He spoke of the run and the difference in the state of the road during the time since he began travelling up and down the road three times a week, ever since leaving school. He and his horses know every pot hole in the road; indeed, when the settlers had banded together to metal the road for and by themselves he had been one of the willing workers. *

Jolting, bumping, swaying, with the cream cans lurching drunkenly on the back, we went on. Here we stopped to pick up cream from wayside stands, and there the driver had to lift them from a sheltered bank on the road. We ran beside a creek where the willow* were tenderly green, swaying in the breeze like the folds of green lace curtains at an open window. Now we were in the bush, where the signs of spring grow more vivid every day. Kowhai trees all golden with blossom gave a feast to the tuis, one of which, unperturbed by the rattle of the wagon, sipped greedily of the honey, only stopping once to sing a note as golden as his honey cup. Clematis hung high on a few tree tops, swinging her fragile loveliness in time to the music of tho breeze. A gentle, warm rain began to fall, and soon the cool, damp scent of the bush arose, a welcome scent to country folk when rain has been longed for. "I hope you won't get wet," said the' driver. "But? we. need the rain!" he added naively.

Out of the bush again, we passed orchards is now white with plum 1)105450111, little Maori homes with the inevitable peach trees as bright spots of colour, and at last readied the main road, there to await the arrivoi of the- huge crea.ni motor lorry. We like-to take things, occasionally, in a leisurely manner in our part of the world, where time does not mean money only. And the cream wagon is a relic of a more leisurely period.