![]() ![]() Lit up with orange streetlamps, Middlemarch feels like a lovers’ wonderland, with new couples beginning to peel off into the shadows, their breath misting in the cold autumn night. Girls trip down the steep carriage steps in their ballgowns and howls emanate from the men as they stride down the main street towards a marquee, erected in a sodden paddock beside the town’s rugby grounds. “The best woman is the ones that don’t talk, otherwise someone that gets on real well …I just need my Juliet.”Īs the Love Train pulls into Middlemarch, shyness and reserve are discarded. “I am definitely single … I guess I am looking for a bit of companionship,” says Hippolite, cherubically handsome and moderately sober in a snug-fitting navy suit. ![]() Truck driver and pig hunter Ethan Hippolite: ‘I just need my Juliet.’ Photograph: The Guardian A further 300 wait at the other end of the line. Some 300 hopeful singles ride the train to Middlemarch. So for many the singles ball at Middlemarch (normal population 186) is a significant calendar event, a genuine opportunity to meet a partner, a companion, a husband or wife.īut first they have to get to the ball, and that’s where the Love Train – a 154km, two-hour ride from Dunedin – comes in. Isolated and time-poor, they are often ignored on dating apps such as Tinder because the GPS pinpoints their location as hundreds of kilometres from the nearest cocktail bar. That in turn has attracted rural men – shepherds, stock agents and farmers in the high country of the underpopulated South Island. With a well-documented man drought in the South Pacific country of 4.7 million people, the event has become especially appealing to single women. The ball has taken on a mythical status in New Zealand, becoming infamous for its debauchery, heavy drinking and occasional, long-lasting love matches. That destination is Middlemarch and a singles ball which, inspired by the matchmaking dances of the 1950s, has been bringing together thousands of young, mostly unattached, people every two years for the past decade and a half. ![]() Eight carriages full of single millennials take the train from Dunedin to Middlemarch. ![]()
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