THE SECRET

Definition of Secret: something not known, or not meant to be known or seen by others.

You may know this place as Queenstown

I know this Country as Timkarik

Two names

One place

And already layers begin to reveal itself

Queenstown is a name written into the history of the town

Timkarik is a name held within Milaythina / country 

Neither name is better than the other

They simply carry different perspectives of the same place

One name tells us how a town came to be known

The other holds a name that belongs to the Country itself

One history is written on the walls of the station

Another is carried in Country, in memory, in knowledge and through generations

One has been written about

One has been protected

The other has too often been left unwritten

And unprotected

As this train leaves the station, I want you to listen for those layers

Look beyond what is written on the walls

Listen beyond what can be seen from the track

Look inside the mountain

Inside the stone

Inside the rainforest

And follow the river

And when the journey reaches the secret station, look up into wurangkili Milaythina

Sky country

Somewhere within all these layers is the secret

Maybe you need to gain a layer before you are able to see it or maybe 

You just have to know where to look

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Mount Owen dominates the Eastern horizon 

As Panupiri, the Sun, rises each morning, her ancient conglomerate stone can glow pink and purple across the horizon

Then Withi, the Moon follows carrying the mountain into another kind of light

For the people of this town Mount Owen has become part of its heart

It is because of this mountain that the place Queenstown exists

Within her ancient bones are veins rich in copper and gold

For those who came searching, the mountain yielded wealth

But Mount Owen was here long before the town

Long before the railway

Long before the mine

Her stones carry ancient zircons, forged in Mother Earth's first fire

Fire and pressure transformed her 

Ice carved her

Wind and water shaped her 

Her glacial lake remembers the ice

Her western slope looms over the town

Her bones remember the fire

Every time you look at Mount Owen, you may see her through different eyes

As knowledge grows, so does the way the world is seen

The mountain does not change

We do

One layer of knowledge can reveal a different reality

One person may see the mountain that helped create a town

Another may see Milaythina that has always been here

The same mountain

Multiple layers

And now the story turns, to the river

The train follows the Queen River south. 

Her water brown with memory.  

When the Queen meets the King River

He embraces her

Two rivers come together with enormous force and movement

The Queen's brown water carrying the truth of what was taken, draws a distinct line through the King

A striking separation

Then slowly, the waters begin to merge

But the Queen does not disappear

Her water travels with The King towards Paralungatik / Macquarie Harbour

The Queen River has been sacrificed in the name of mining

But she refuses to let her scars become the story that defines her

And Milaythina embraces her the best it can

Rainforest

Stone

River

All carrying her onwards

Another layer of the same Country

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These train tracks move through the heart of ancient volcano country

Hundreds of millions of years ago, the Mount Read Volcanic Belt roared into being

More than a hundred volcanic centres erupted across this ancient landscape

They roared

They shook Milaythina

They filled the sky with fire

For millions of years, volcanic fire and mineral-rich fluids transformed the ancient stones of Timkarik

The volcanoes that once reached towards the sky are gone now

Wind carried them away

Water wore them down

Ice carved through them

What remains are their foundations

Their stone hearts hardened

Their bodies forming the wild West Coast landscape

Skeletons within the landscape

A graveyard of volcanoes

But even this is not the beginning

Inside these stones are ancient zircons 

Older than the volcanoes

Older than the mountains

An ancient stone transformed again and again by fire, pressure, ice, wind and water

Every cliff carries a memory

Every stone carries a story

Every mineral vein carries something of those ancient volcanoes

And now there is silence

The silence of the West Coast

Not an empty silence

The kind of silence left after millions of years of thunder

The giants are resting

Their bodies remain

They are the landscape beneath this journey

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And another layer now surrounds the train

The rainforest

Silver wattle surrounds us 

Pale foliage catches the fading light

Yellow flowers brighten the green

This is where the meaning of secret begins to change

The secret was never the station

It was never simply what was found inside the mine

And it was never something hidden beneath the stone

The truth is within it

Within the mountain

Within the ancient stone

Within the river

Within the rainforest

And within the people of this Country

The landscape is changing

The light is changing

The journey is turning towards the sky

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When you step from the train, I invite you to look upwards

Look west

Panupiri - Father has set

And look in the east 

Withi – Mother rises

Night after night

Day after day

These Palawa ancestral beings follow the same ancient path travelled since the beginning

When you step outside, look towards the eastern sky

Look for the Milky Way stretching across wurangkili

And perhaps you will find the three brother stars

Their return belongs to another layer of knowledge

Signalling the turning of the seasons and the movement towards warmer weather

But before you step outside, think about the journey just travelled

The station

The railway

The town

The mine

The mountain

The river

The rainforest

The volcanoes

The ancient stone

And now, Sky Country

The same ancient zircons held within the stones of Milaythina are found in the stars

The same ancient memory

The stone below
The stars above

The journey has travelled through the layers of Milaythina to bring you here

Not simply to see the stars

But to reflect on everything you have heard

So when you step from this train, take a moment

Leave the railway behind

Let the afternoon become evening

Embrace wurangkili

And remember the layers

Remember sometimes the deepest truths are not the things we are shown

They are the things we learn to see

And the final layer is waiting above

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By now - you may think this journey has been about mountains, volcanoes, rivers and ancient stones

But those were only layers

The real story was carried through them 

The name held in country 

The memories carried 

The Knowledge never lost 

The ancient zircons 

The Palawa 

I am not standing outside this Country looking in

I belong within it

I am the mountain

I am the ancient stone

I am the river

The ancient zircons in the stone of Timkarik are part of my creation story

They are part of the mountain's story

They are part of Milaythina story 

And when I look into wurangkili, they are part of the stars too. 

The same ancient story written in the stars, the stone, and the Palawa

Every layer of this journey has added another way of seeing Country

And perhaps another layer has been added to the person listening

The secret was not something hidden from view

It was within the layers all along

Milaythina has layers 

So do the Palawa 

The Queen River endures

So do the Palawa

Country remembers Palawa

She remembers her name

I am Palawa

I am the memory within Timkarik 

I am the beginning

We are still here