The legendary Glenorchy Races, run on the first Saturday of January, take place today, from 11am. In this edited extract from his latest book, High-Country Lark, Dunedin author Neville Peat describes the 2008 event.
The burly ticket-seller who was greeting vehicles arriving at the Glenorchy Recreation Ground main gate sets the tone for the day - country-casual and hard-case.
"When's the first race due to start?" I ask.
"Any time soon - we're on Glenorchy Time."
He dishes out a dark-red sticker that says "Yes, I've paid. Lakeside Football Club, Races '08", and a programme, and I park with the other punters on the rugby field inside the race track, not far from a set of rusty goalposts.
It's mid-morning. The mercury is climbing, and the parched grass for parking on looks alarmingly treeless and therefore shadeless.
In the cordoned-off street next to the ground, the horses are tied up to fences and trees, each carrying a large identification number on its hindquarters.
Their riders, many of them women, are busy checking saddles and bridles, and chatting animatedly as if getting some important new gossip about goings-on in local equine social circles - straight from the horse's mouth.
They are wearing black T-shirts with pink lettering on the back.
It says: "Ride it like you stole it!"
Towards 11 o'clock, the public-address system starts up - two male voices introduce themselves as "Grant and Ferg - the Odd Couple".
They are radio announcers from Queenstown, a double act with quick-fire repartee and clearly not new to providing commentary for this event.
The "modern" Glenorchy Races began as a fundraiser for the Lakeside Football Club in 1962, growing out of an annual sports day to become a legend among the country's horse-racing carnivals.
Glenorchy race days go back over a century.
Some of the horses used to be barged to the Head of the Lake from the sheep and cattle stations surrounding it.
This is horse-heaven after all, a district in which horses just about outnumber people and where, in the past, they have smoothed the way for prospectors, pastoralists and tourists dressed in Sunday best.
I have never seen so many cowboy hats in one place.
Of various makes and models, the cowboy hats look somewhat odd perched on men in three-quarter pants and bare-shouldered women in slinky short frocks.
It's going to be a scorcher. The high-country sun has sent temperatures into the mid-20s by the programmed 11am start time.
Grant and Ferg, besides being cheeky to each other and to a few guys heckling them from on top of a bright-blue horse float, have some preliminary housekeeping announcements for the crowd.
Sunburn: "Get a helping of sun block from the St John Ambulance folk; slap it on for a dollar. Good cause, too."
Toilets: "Make sure you go early to the portaloos around the ground. No, it's not a good thing to be visiting them late in the day. Go early."
When it comes to describing the betting process, the announcer's voice takes on a serious tone: "We had a tote going here once. It's equalisator betting now."
He goes on to explain how a newspaper reported there was totalisator operating at the Glenorchy Races (a more serious form of gambling than the equalisator system commonly seen at community horse-racing events).
Wellington officialdom in the form of the New Zealand Racing Board and the Department of Internal Affairs got wind of Glenorchy's tote and clamped down on it.
"So, that buggered the totalisator. Now we have the equalisator," says Grant.
Or is it Ferg? I can't tell them apart.
The commentators use portable microphones and wander about the area around the finish line, interviewing visitors lined up at the rail and poking fun at competitors, officials - and the beer-swilling guys from Waikaia on the horse-float grandstand.
Their broadcast is an entertaining mixture of respectful comment and ribald side-swiping.
It fits with the country casualness of the event, not to mention the sportingly fine weather and spectacular surroundings.
The Humboldt Mountains are a dramatic if humbling backdrop.
Summer heat has reduced their snow cover to patches resembling ancient hieroglyphics, spelling awesome in any language.
No chance of a Head of the Lake "weather bomb" today.
But there's been one before.
Everyone remembers the 1994 races.
From late morning the sky began to darken over Mount Earnslaw/Pikirakatahi until it became as sinister as Mount Doom, the seat of power of Tolkien's tyrannical Lord Sauron.
The mountains around Earnslaw began to rumble with thunder. Lightning flashed.
The rain was soon belting down at the rate of an inch an hour.
Ponds grew on the low patches around the race course and the rugby field in the centre, the parking space.
When it looked unlikely the rain would let up, the races were called off around 2.30.
My first experience of the Glenorchy Races is the 2008 event, and I am keen to catch up with Jim Veint, of Arcadia Station.
He's helped with the running of more than 40 of these events.
I find him in front of the equalisator tent writing horses' names and numbers on a whiteboard. I ask him how the equalisator works.
When the equalisator is closed before the running of each race, the numbers of the competing horses are applied by ballot to letters of the alphabet corresponding to the tickets sold.
Instead of placing bets on individual horses - the totalisator method - the punters simply buy lettered tickets at $1 a pop, and listen out for the numbers from ground announcements.
A dividend, minus a small commission for the rugby club, is paid out on the winning horse only.
It's a system more akin to a raffle than gambling.
Jim has 41 horses listed so far - well down on the 70-odd of the tote years - but they are still arriving even with the first race about to start, and the tally could reach 50.
"We've kept the same race programme since 1964, with the addition of the Ladies' Gallop and Local Gallop."
Jim was the first secretary and captain of the Lakeside Football Club, and a prime instigator, with Wattie Watson of Routeburn Station, the club's first president, in developing the race meeting out of the tradition of a gymkhana.
Funds raised by the Glenorchy Races have given the district an array of new services and mod-con hardware.
Chalk up television reception, a swimming pool, a new ambulance, flasher rugby clubrooms, and improved fire-fighting, medical, library and school amenities.
A bugle announces the close of betting for the first race and the 22 horses in the field set off at a walk as prescribed by the rules of the race, with one doing it sideways, prompting Ferg to tell the crowd it could be Monday before the race is over.
There are 10 races to get through by about 5 o'clock Glenorchy time, with a lunch break of half an hour promised somewhere in the middle of the programme.
Each race is wrapped in a warm fuzz of waggish commentary.
The way the horses get spaced out early - and the distance between first and last in each race - confirms the tradition of variable fitness and ability among the entrants.
By the look of them and their solid build, many of the horses are more used to slogging it out on the hills, mustering sheep and driving cattle, than going flat out round a race track.
For the punters, it's a picnic day out with family and friends, and a chance to wear a cowboy hat.
Not to worry if you haven't brought food.
Over by the rugby pavilion are food stalls selling whitebait patties and venison burgers, and dessert in the form of strawberries and cream.
The whitebait are a coastal delicacy, of course, but the venison and strawberries are Head of the Lake specialties that appeared on menus at the Paradise and Arcadia guest houses in a past era.
The saddling race is like something out of Mel Brooks' comic Western of the 1970s, Blazing Saddles.
It involves a race in two parts - a sprint from the start/finish line bareback to the other end of the straight, where the contestants must throw over and secure a saddle, then ride back to finish.
The last rider makes it with his backside slewing one way then the other down the home straight.
His predicament is summed up by the announcers: "She's a hard road, boy, finding the perfect mount."
I make a couple of visits to the betting tent.
There are winning tickets both times, with payouts of $11 and $7 - a 50% return on investment.
Maybe I had a lucky run because I was served by a bright-eyed man with an accent, possibly French.
How's that for a tip?
• High-Country Lark is the third book in Neville Peat's acclaimed Lark series, a novel approach to environmental writing.
It was completed with the support of the 2007 Creative New Zealand Michael King Writers' Fellowship.
The previous titles in the series are The Falcon and the Lark and Coasting: The Sea Lion and the Lark.
• The book is published by Longacre Press, Dunedin. RRP $44.95
