It was the sign that caught my eye before I spotted him. "WOMAN WANTED. GOOD COOK," announced hand-painted black lettering on a white board, nailed to the front fence of the wooden railway house.
The TranzAlpine train was taking a five-minute breather, having descended through the pitch-blackness of the steep, 8.5km-long Otira tunnel which burrows its way out of the Southern Alps to emerge among verdant, bush-clad, misty-topped mountains.
We were in Otira, a straggling line of 1920s wooden houses just over three hours northwest of our early morning starting point in Christchurch on the east coast, and almost two hours short of our destination, Greymouth, on the opposite side of New Zealand's South Island.
It was our first glimpse of the West Coast.
Seeing the painted sign through the large, tinted windows of our carriage, I scooped up my camera and headed as quickly as possible towards one of the two viewing decks. Glancing at my quarry as I made my way through the carriages, I spied a rugged man standing in the home's front porch. What a picture.
But when I was almost at the deck, the train jolted, shuddered, and moved forward, carrying me away from my prize.
The TranzAlpine gathered pace, and as we gently clacked along the tracks I wondered to what extent that Otira scene was a reflection of the real West Coast.
What circumstances would produce that curious mix of personal advert and situations vacant? Was it just coincidence that a man happened to be standing there when the train pulled up? Or had we just entered a West more wild and unusual than we had imagined?
That is the wonderful thing about train travel. It is all relaxation and leisure - time and room to watch, interact and reflect.
One thing was clear. This part of New Zealand was quite different from what lay behind us.
For the first hour we had rolled through the broad, foggy, flatness of the Canterbury plains, before disembarking briefly at the small rural settlement of Springfield to survey the sun-bleached, tussocked mountains that blocked our path.
Between there and Arthur's Pass township, which gives entrance to the Otira tunnel, the train twisted its way up through the Waimakariri Gorge and into the Alpine foothills, crossing four viaducts and passing through a dozen or more tunnels.
But now, on the other side of the Main Divide, the colours seemed more lush and vivid.
And on every side mountains jutted skywards from river-traced valley floors like forested shark teeth poised to tear at the low-hanging clouds.
During the next two days each new experience and conversation added shape and texture to what had been the formless clay of my West Coast perceptions.
On that first evening we sat on a stony, driftwood-strewn beach and ate fish and chips from last week's Greymouth Star wrapping as we watched a retired Coaster and his adult son (back from Christchurch for the weekend) set a long line and pull in half a dozen grey and spotty sharks.
Late the next morning we struggled to finish a deliciously generous cooked brunch at DP1 Cafe on the site of Greymouth's first building - Deposit Plan 1. There I heard a tourist being given the refreshing reassurance that the local parking wardens were unlikely to issue tickets unless you were a recidivist time-breacher.
Conversations had, and overheard, communicated an unaffected openness that was appealing.
"I thought you said you didn't want to order any more eggs," a free-range supplier said to a shopkeeper.
"No. I said I wasn't allowed, but I'm still going to," came the reply.
At Shantytown Heritage Park, 10km south of Greymouth, the children enjoyed exploring the historic buildings, riding the steam train through the bush to a demonstration sawmill and panning for gold.
The ample signboards and the holographic theatre made it clear how harsh and unpredictable West Coast life was in the early days, for European and Chinese migrants alike.
At the long, gravel-bottomed troughs of water where visitors try their hand at gold panning were gathered about 20 middle-aged Chinese women.
They were from the United States, here on a whirlwind visit without their well-to-do businessmen husbands.
As they chattered, an employee (an older man), deftly demonstrated how to repeatedly flush grit from the pan until only the few flecks of gold remained.
"It's in my blood," the old-timer said.
His grandfather had been a gold miner on the West Coast and he himself had been tending this gold-panning stall for the past 22 years.
The contrasts and ironies jostled for space in my head.
Mid-afternoon we drove down the coast to picturesque Hokitika, arriving as the sea fog rolled in and too late to find many of the artisan galleries and workshops open. So instead, we followed country roads 25km inland to Hokitika Gorge where a swing bridge spans the often milky blue-green river flowing between granite cliffs it has cut through the rimu forest. It was just one of seemingly endless examples of a largely unspoilt region replete with natural beauty.
On the way back we paused to read the plaque at the middle-of-nowhere memorial to the seven victims of alienated, gun-toting farmer Graham Stanley whose 1941 murders - and Stanley's manhunt and death - were the subject of 1982 film Bad Blood.
During our last morning we drove out along the northern side of the Grey River to the Brunner Mine site. In March, 1896, an explosion at the mine killed 65 people, making it the worst mining disaster in New Zealand history.
The ruins of this extensive coal mine now sit quietly in a grassed, riverside landscape.
But the evident size of the coke ovens and the reproduced photographs show what a dirty, labour-intensive hive of industry this spot once was.
Aboard the TranzAlpine again and heading east it did not seem long before the train was slowing at Otira. I was on the viewing deck, camera in hand, trying not to feel disappointed that my man would no doubt be absent.
And then, there he was.
Leaning, in the porch of that house left over from a time when the natural resources of this region were fuelling the economic growth of a nation.
And out beyond the house, surrounding and dwarfing it, the majestic, untamed beauty of forest and mountains which hold the promise of a new, greener boom. Bearded, mature but lean, he continued to stand motionless, looking towards the train. A wordlessly eloquent declaration of past hardships, unvarnished reality and tenacious hope - the very spirit of the West Coast.
• Bruce Munro is a reporter for The Star.
The TranzAlpine has a winter special for $99 return ($69 for a child) until August 30. There is a family fare for $299 return for two adults and up to four children.
