The Muster- Tom O'Brien: Railway Lines and Skimming Stones

Garston correspondent Tom O'Brien has a chat regarding all issues from upper Northern Southland.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
The muster on the farm with Southland District Council working
together for a better Southland.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
We're away up to Garston this afternoon on the muster
to catch up with Tom O'Brien, business owner up that way.
And last time we spoke to you, you were on
a jigger between Fairlight and Kingston. Tom, good afternoon. Did
you fix all those sleepers?

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Oh, good afternoon, Andy. Well, interestingly enough, yesterday morning, after
I watched the All Black game. Um, I went out
with a couple of mates and we, we dropped off
50 sleepers, um, which are now currently, well, they're just
about to be put in with, with the digger that
goes on the rails. Uh, I'm not there at the moment. I'm,
I'm at the farm at the moment enjoying the sunshine.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
No, only 50 sleepers. That's not bad. Well, yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
So that'll be the, that'll be the first truck.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
That's the first truck idea.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Yeah. Yeah. And, um, You know, I was just saying
to my mate yesterday, I said, you know, back in
my day, you know, we used to have to do
all this by hand, you know, and between two of us,
if we got 11 sleepers in in a day, we
were doing really, really well. So, yeah, it's amazing how
quickly time flies and technology changes and, you know, the
world moves on and advances. But, you know, like we

(01:14):
sort of cut our teeth back then and that was,
I mean, it doesn't seem that long ago. When I
think about it, that's back in 1993, right? So, yeah,
just got to keep moving.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Forward, mate. We all cut our teeth in certain things
once upon a time, but you were part of the
Dunedin rap scene, weren't you, back in the day?

Speaker 1 (01:31):
Oh, here we go. Here we go. Yeah, well, I
don't know if I was part of the scene. I
guess you could say that I kind of dabbled in it. Yeah,
I think the only thing I was cutting was shapes
on the dance floor. I don't know if I was
really cutting up too much on the microphone, although... Although
I do have a very distant memory of getting on
the stage, and I think Tiki Tane of Salmonella Dub

(01:54):
was emceeing, and I managed to jump up on the
stage and have a bit of a blast. And I
think as I retreated to the exit stage left, he
was like, who was that guy? So, yeah, I'll claim that. But, yeah,
I'm still doing a bit of writing, actually. I still,
you know, write a few songs and a bit of
poetry from time to time. If I can't sleep at night,

(02:16):
I'll wake up and... put a penta pad, and, yeah,
it's a nice way to sort of relax and calm
your mind, and, yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
It's good. You should have been at the Poetry Night
in Te Arau about 10 days ago.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Oh, I didn't know anything about it. I would have
loved to have gone, mate. Yeah, I went along.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
It was my wife's birthday. She was outside with her mate,
but I went inside and had a listen, and, yeah,
poetry and motions as such.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's good. It's good for the soul.
It's a good way to express yourself. In fact.
I don't know about you, mate, but I kind of
get a feeling that there's a lot more open mic
nights happening around the country. And I'd like to know
whether or not there are open mic nights in Gore
or in Decargill. I mean, if there's the poetry night

(03:00):
in in Te Ana, and I don't know if that's
a regular thing or not, but we should be doing
more of this stuff, I reckon.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Hey, look, you were a part of the stone-skimming champs,
New Zealand champs, at Lake Hawea a couple of months back. Now, overnight,
Abby McDonald, based in Queenstown, she took out the women's prize.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, unbelievable, wasn't it? Like, the world champion. Although, you know,
I witnessed her winning the New Zealand Aotearoa stone-skimming championships
on Lake Hawea, and You know, people go, oh shit,
how hard can it be? And it's like, well, actually, no,
you've got to actually keep within a laneway. And I
think from memory, we had a six metre laneway that

(03:39):
we had to keep the stone inside. But correct me
if I'm wrong, but I think in Scotland, I think
it's a four metre lane. So it's very difficult. My
understanding was that she managed to top out at 72 metres,
which is very impressive.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
Now, my bone of contention with stone skimming, careful how
you say that, was that not distance, but how many
times you could get the stone to bubble up and
down as it just fluttered across the water.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Well, interestingly enough, mate, when I was first approached by
Jeff Ross up at Lake Set-Harway Station to say, hey, look,
I'd like you to come along, would you give it
a whirl? I was like, yeah, no problem.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
And.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
You know, they've got the very strict sort of adjudicators
and judges and cameras set up and all the rest
of it. And I thought that part of the criteria
was exactly that, how many times the stone actually skims
on the water.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
Because I, as a kid, remember, you know, it was
always like, oh, look, I've got 27. I counted 27
skips in there. And, yeah, you know, I thought that
would have been part of the criteria as well. But
I guess it's very– unless you've got super high-speed cameras
to be able to count– each stone, and I don't
know if they had that check or not, but maybe
they should bring it in.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Well, we've got that clarified anyway, but you've got some
cool stuff going on there where you're based at Garston.
You've got a keg of beer from a beer company
that's going to be sitting in a hut.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
Well, yeah, I mean, I've got a PR company coming
down from Auckland tomorrow, and they're measuring up one of
the huts, and what they're basically going to do is
wrap the hut in a Well, it's a zero beer, right?
It's Heineken Zero. Heineken Zero, yes. It's like a global
giant Heineken, as we all know. But also, as we've

(05:27):
found out in the news quite recently, the rates of
alcoholic drinking or drinking of alcoholic beverages is dropping quite
rapidly in New Zealand, which is a healthy thing, which
is a good thing, really. But it's being superseded by
the likes of these zero beers. And To be brutally honest,
you know, when they first came out, I thought, oh, God,
they tasted a bit like horse piss, to be fair. But, yeah,

(05:49):
they come out of the way, and they're actually, some
of them are really good.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
Just finally, ground conditions at Garston, how have things been?
Is it wet?

Speaker 1 (05:58):
Oh, it is a bit wet underfoot, actually, to be fair.
You know, a beautiful day, but, yeah, we've had a
decent amount of precipitation, mate, and that's... And it's certainly
a bit of surface water in some of the lower-lying
parts and areas. But I'm standing on a veranda at
the moment, and I'm looking out over the paddocks, and
I see all of the poplars and willows sort of

(06:21):
in the shelter-bouts. They're all just popping. They're just beautiful, iridescent, beautiful,
bright greens and yellows. And it's very pleasant to look at. So,
you know, spring has literally sprung.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
Good on you, Tom. Always appreciate your time.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
Good on you. See you, mate. Laugh out loud with
Ag Proud, cos life on the land can be a
laughing matter.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
Brought to us by Shearwell Data, working to help the
livestock farmer. What's the difference between a moose and an ant?
A moose is antlers, but an ant doesn't have mooselers. Well,
that's us over and done with for the afternoon. Hopefully
we get some drying out there. My name's Andy Muir.

(07:06):
Of course, the muster is brought to you by Peter's Genetics.
Podcast will be going up shortly thanks to iHeartRadio, and
I'll see you tomorrow at 1 o'clock.