Back O’ The Shed:

Jim visits Bush Town which will be a fully fledged, recreated pioneer timber town once complete

The ladies at the bank are fearful they’ll be outsourced, to a call centre in Mumbai maybe, or turned into holograms, bitcoin babes, virtual tellers in some mirror maze of money.

Much apprehension abounds in today’s workplaces, fanned by the gale-force winds of change blowing old certainties and job security out the window.

But this isn’t the first such shock-and-awe cyclone to visit alarum on us. Two things recently reminded me of this; first, the fascinating valve radio story on page 6 of this issue, and second, just days later, a visit to the Bush Town Steam Up Day on the outskirts of Waimate.

On radio first — it came with the car and later in the car and both, in their wondrous ways, made the world a more accessible and exciting place. Radio was the precursor of everything electronic we now take for granted. It was a revelation and a revolution. There was a time when it was so new and awesome that families would dress up and sit in a semicircle in front of it, not only listening to but staring reverently at the wooden box delivering this unimagined magic. We passed through radio’s aural portal on our way to becoming modern.

I still own a big upright valve radio, tall as a bar fridge, an ornate reminder of those crackly YA days, but with one knob missing now, alas. Oh dear, a missing knob — every bloke’s nightmare.

Not so the Bush Town Steam Up Day. That was every sheddie’s dream. With several traction engines working, plus stationary engines, a rescued Ransome steam lorry, and an old-school sawmill savagely slicing sappy slabs, it was a splendid spectacle.

When it’s finished, Bush Town will be a fully fledged, recreated pioneer timber town, as Waimate was when the loggers came to mill the great southern totara forest, cutting wood for houses and railway sleepers. In 1887 a runaway blaze destroyed the forest and the industry.

And Steam Up went beyond timber too. It showcased what was yesterday’s cutting edge and state of the art, the dizzy limit of known technology. It’s easy to forget, as you’re seduced again by the polished brass, the painted wheels, the jets of steam, and the holy, coaly smell of an old traction engine that today’s nostalgia was yesterday’s game changer, as confronting as the driverless car.

They may be old tunes now, but the slow, methodical chug of a singlecylinder engine and the hisses, whirs, rattles, rumbles, clanks, and chuffs of a Foden or Burrell were once the sounds of revolution. It’s amazing how coal and water have transformed the world. Light one, heat the other, and you’ve got steam, an energy source as vital as oil or electricity. There wouldn’t have been an Industrial Revolution without it. It transformed the workplace as electronics are today.

And on a grander scale. Change was bigger then, machines more massive. Steam needs furnaces and boilers to do its thing; not so a lithium-propelled smartphone. Progress is shrinking. Tomorrow keeps getting downsized, miniaturized, its working parts unseen or uninteresting. Will there be a 2118 Charge Up Day featuring displays of olde worlde Samsungs and iPhones? I doubt it!

But Steam Up 2018 reminds you just how much love, sweat, and beers it takes to keep these old chuffers going. There isn’t space here to cover Guy Wigley’s Burrell, or the 1000 tons of smokeless Welsh coal that he’s imported to keep it running, or the old Ransome steam lorry that he and his brother Hugh now preserve, or Stewart Townshend’s US plan-perfect Model T Depot Hack that started out as nothing more than a fuel cap.

Suffice to say, for now, to all of them and every other overall’d saviour of the machines that made us, “Thanks, guys, love your work!” And if you love traction engines, check out Timaru’s Traction Engine Museum, off SH1 at 233 Brosnan Road, open 1–4pm every Saturday.

Finally, a message from the past for today’s apprehensive employees: “Fear not. Change is coming. It always has. It always will. And we’ll get by. We always do.” Listen carefully and you’ll hear the valve radios and traction engines quietly agree.