Daily Photo – Fairlight

Leaving Athol, State Highway 6 quickly slips into that familiar Southland habit of stretching out in long, ruler-straight lines, as if the surveyor couldn’t be bothered. Further on, smaller settlements appeared almost apologetically, little more than a handful of houses and a war memorial that looks like it’s been keeping a quiet eye on the place for over a century. Blink, and you’re on your way again.

Further on, I found myself at Fairlight. At first glance, it’s just a station beside the road, but this patch of ground was once “The Ten Mile,” a staging stop for horses and travellers in the pre-railway days. Then came the 10th July 1878, when the first train rattled through on the newly completed Athol-to-Kingston line. Invercargill marked the occasion with a celebration excursion, five engines, twenty carriages, and presumably a few startled sheep watching the spectacle roll past.

The building here today started life as Otautau’s railway station, built around the 1920s, and was hauled over to Fairlight in 1996. Now it serves as the southern terminus of the Kingston Flyer, quietly keeping watch, waiting for the next whistle of steam, and maybe remembering the days of old when the carriages made the ground tremble.