Similar embankments spring to the eye up the lower stretches of the Pigroot.
I think not of boyhood train sets and memory laden trips to Oamaru on the limited express but of Alfred Hanlon, the eminent King's Counsel who so graced the Dunedin bar from 1888. to 1944.
Indeed, it is 120 years ago this very month that he was admitted as a barrister and solicitor of the then Supreme Court.
Alf Hanlon was pre-eminent as a defence lawyer for almost 50 years, although was only appointed a King's Counsel in 1930, 42 years after being admitted to the profession.
He was over 6 feet tall, fair haired and drew distinct comparisons with those greatest of all barristers of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, Sir Edward Carson, Sir Edward Marshall Hall, and Mr F.E. Smith, later Lord Birkenhead.
The rather sycophantic description given to Sir Edward Marshall Hall by his adoring biographer, "This Roman head on Saxon shoulders sat" could equally apply to Alf Hanlon, because his grace and explosive appearance in our courts and tribunals was simply second to none.
The link between this great King's Counsel and the railway remnants I mention above becomes evident when you read his detailed memoirs Random Recollections, written 69 years ago about the endurances he suffered using public and private transport to get to his outlying courts and tribunals.
Mr Hanlon was well known throughout New Zealand for his colourful murder trials.
He appeared for the defence in 18 murders and 22 manslaughters in his career.
This was thought to be something of a record but it is a sad sign of modern violent times that Alf's tally paled beside the late Mike Bungay's record of more than 130 homicides.
In his first homicide trial, his client Billy Fogarty struck little Jimmy Fiddis who fell over, hit this head and died.
Billy was charged with manslaughter and was found guilty but was sentenced to just one hour in custody.
You see, Billy was only 12 and Jimmy barely 11.
They were fighting over a kite.
Youth of that age, even today, can be charged with murder and manslaughter.
Alf Hanlon lived in the grand house which still stands on the lower corner of Pitt and Elder Sts and he maintained his offices on the first floor of Eldon Chambers on the northern corner of Princes St and Moray Pl across the road from the Savoy, where he frequently dined.
But it was Mr Hanlon's early days as a general or "taxi rank" barrister that stirs the memories of train travel to judicial outposts in Otago and provides a wonderful insight to the way justice was administered 75 years ago.
Hanlon KC died well before I was born but I can remember a number of country courts and tribunals now closed but which provided a true community-based judicial system. Courts at Palmerston, Ranfurly, Milton and Lumsden were held regularly into the early 1880s, with the local constable frequently acting as prosecutor, registrar and probation officer all at the one time, and the magistrate usually met police and counsel for "one noggin" at the local pub after the sitting.
In his memoirs, Alf relates many such travels.
They are all comfortable drives by car today, but in those days more advanced planning was needed. He wrote pre-war, "there were factors of hazard and inconvenience with which the modern lawyer no longer has to cope".
And then, presumably feeling very modern, he continued: "Railway services link nearly every centre in the Dominion and, where the iron horse does not penetrate, powerful service cars speed along on balloon tyres on well-formed roads, replacing the old but sure stage coaches."
Alf relates the misery of his travel.
In August 1895, after he had finished a case in the Invercargill Court having travelled to that outpost on the limited express from Dunedin, he then had to travel to the Queenstown District Court.
He retraced his steps on the express to Gore, boarded a side train to Kingston and then waited for a cold and wet journey up the lake on a steamer.
Of course, after the case he reversed the same travel arrangements back to Dunedin.
He tells of attending the District Court at Naseby, long since closed.
The closest railhead was at Middlemarch so horse and carriage was the only way to go and the whole journey took a full day of cold and wet travel.
Mr Hanlon frequently appeared in the Warden's Courts which were abolished in 1971.
They resolved disputes about mining claims and sat at the goldfields.
One of his most miserable trips was to the Warden's Court at Macraes.
This was not the pleasant 30-minute trip from Outram today in a comfortable car complete with iPod and cellphone.
His travels began with the limited express to Palmerston, stopping at three stations between here and Port Chalmers, then the Gums, Purakaunui, Waitati, Warrington, Seacliff and a few more besides.
He would change to the side line up to Dunback to be met by a welcoming client with a couple of nags to bump and grind the final stretch to Macraes.
Even then, returning two days later by reversing the process, he arrived many hours later at the Dunedin railway station in the rain.
A Hansom cab had to be hailed but it could not manage the muddied incline up Pitt St and Alf had to trudge in the snow up the last stretch to his home before reading his briefs for the next morning's Magistrates Court.
All these images flash through my mind merely at the sight of one of these almost hidden embankments but they are constant reminders of the transport network of yesterday and Alf Hanlon's own 1939 autobiography Random Recollections is well worth a read.
We must remember the great characters in our local history.
They are the ones who did much to shape our life many years on.
They planned and built the facilities we enjoy today.
They planted and preserved the Gardens, seeded the oak trees at Jubilee Park in 1897 and supported hundreds of other community projects.
Alf Hanlon was a giant in the law and the community and his life must be celebrated.
- Michael Guest is a former lawyer and District and Family Court Judge
