Category Archives: South Island

Another chill and do little day.  The weather is bright, sunny and breezy.  Despite the sun it’s chilly and my jacket comes out for the first time since we got off the Trans-Sib.  We spend a few hours in the centre of Dunedin sightseeing, browsing the shops, buying some clothes and getting a hair cut for Andy.  Also dubbed the ‘Garden City’ – at least according to the tourist bumpf, but any gardens  are not immediately evident and seem to be some distance from the centre.  The hub of the city is  the Octagon, a small patch of grass crossed by Princes Street and bordered by cafes and restaurants, the cathedral and home to a statue of  Robbie Burns.  (Are you beginning to get the Scottish connection?).  But it is not the congested, snarl of traffic you might expect in a city centre, quite the contrary.   The centre is compact and is predominantly low rise. There  is a comfortable mix of the new and old the Victorian and Edwardian gothic sitting happily alongside more recent buildings and the architecture generally has a more varied character than some New Zealand towns.  And whilst the traffic is minimal, it seems more vibrant than in Christchurch.  Perhaps it’s the fact that it is a university town – over fifth of the city’s population of 123,000 are students?  Recently in the news for a raucous Freshers toga parade through the streets which got a little out of hand (eggs and flour were thrown and students vomited in the streets!)  Like Christchurch it is possible to stand in a city centre street and view the hills in the distance;  the kind of vista not normally associated with European towns and cities!  The urban sprawl though is just that, stretching for miles across the hills around the harbour – Dunedin is New Zealand’s largest city by area.

We take a walk around the University campus which is situated just north of the centre.  A pleasant, buzzing hive of activity;  this must be the most people we’ve seen in one place since we arrived in New Zealand (apart from at the Billy Connolly concert)!  At the heart of the campus is a majestic 130-year-old gothic stone building on the grassy banks of a small river.  Whilst the streets around with their rather run-down bay-fronted, single-storey weatherboard houses, doors ajar and sofas on the porches have a rather bohemian air.

The train station is another majestic Victorian pile which appears, if the information in the ticket hall is anything to go by, to operate only one service;  the Taieri Gorge Railway, reputedly one of the world’s great train trips – a half-day scenic journey along the Taieri River Gorge.  The train runs twice daily and when we arrive to admire the building (which is beautifully preserved both inside and out – the tiling in the ticket hall is superb) the train is standing at platform 1 being washed down!  The station’s other great claim to fame is being New Zealand’s most photographed building, although how exactly that is measured is hard to guess.

Another interesting NZ phenomenon and one that is hard to get used to is seeing Lloyds Bank’s pre-TSB livery, including the Black Horse,  in the guise of The National Bank. Does the average Kiwi-in-the-street realise that one of their major banks is a high street bank in the UK in which the British government now has a majority stake, one wonders?

Now we have got over the shock of how much everything here costs compared to south-east Asia we have come to the conclusion that the cost of living here is generally much lower than in the UK – food and clothes, for instance, are much cheaper as is a round of drinks – $10 (£3.50) for a beer and G&T – or a £2.50 for two drinks in a cafe.

Phrase of the day seen on a directional sign on the Otago University campus:  Queer Support =  ????

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It’s a lovely, clear day, sunny and warm as we set out to explore the Otago Peninsular which stretches the length of Otago Harbour and covers 19000 hectares.  The round trip taking the harbourside road out to Taiaroa Heads and returning on the Highcliff Road is about 64 kilometres of breathtakingly beautiful scenery.  The road winds around the bays of  Otago Harbour hugging the quiet shoreline before climbing into the hills and revealing at each twist and turn extensive and magnificent panoramas the length of the enormous inlet;  the Pacific coastline to the north and south;  and glimpses of bays and steep valleys dotted with newly-shorn sheep. 

Our first stop is Larnach Castle – which has the distinction of being New Zealand’s only castle.  Built in the 19^th century by William Larnach, a banker and politician, it is a curious mixture of  English manor house and New Zealand colonial architecture – a stone-built tower-and-turret affair with a glazed lace ironwork verandah around it.  Inside, it is unusually homely for a ‘castle’, with modestly proportioned rooms that visitors are free to wander into and around without restriction or the usual ropes cordons.  The views from the tower are just to die for and on this sunny clear day it is possible to see the length off the peninsular from Dunedin at one end of the inlet to the Pacific at the other.  The grounds too, are very prettily laid out with a raised lawn, Italian fountain and laburnum-clad pergola (which must be lovely when it is in flower)  through which there is a glimpse of the harbour in the distance.  Several other gardens lead off from the formal lawn in front of the house, one in particular having fabulous views.  The castle was bought by the Barker family in 1967 after a period of neglect and they have made it their life’s work to restore it which they have done magnificently.

From Larnach Castle we drive on to the Royal Albatross Colony at the end of the peninsular. There is a large visitor’s centre but little access to the colony itself which is fenced off.  Pilot Bay just below the centre affords the best possibility for viewing the  Albatross, although we only see two or three, as well as a few seals resting on the rocks.  The latter hard to spot without binoculars as they merge so well  with the rocks along the shoreline.  It’s windy and chilly despite the sun and we don’t dally long.

We meander back towards Dunedin on the Pacific side of the peninsular which takes onto  unsurfaced roads to the Pyramids – two hills so-called for their remarkable geometric contours –  around Papanui and Hoopers Inlets both wonderfully wild and almost empty of cars, until eventually we return to the Highway Road down into Dunedin.

Unfortunately, although wonderfully scenic all the major attractions and in particular the wild life sanctuaries are commercially run, making it almost impossible to see anything other than the seals and sea lions and the odd albatross in flight unless you part with some serious dosh.

Word of the day:  superette – small supermarket

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