A catch up with the 'rellies' in sparkling Dunedin

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Whoever said Wellington was hilly with suburbs perched on hillsides hadn’t ever been to Dunedin.



OK, the main shopping area is flat to undulating but as soon as you get back a street or two to the west it is generally straight up and for us driving up to Maori Hill to meet up with my cousin Mary and Aunty Bunty for morning tea tested the gears of the car. As we left George Street Gretchen was saying that we could have walked from the hotel but she changed her mind within 100 metres as the road climbed steeply to Highgate.



We spent a very special and enjoyable couple of hours catching up on the past decades over coffee and macaroons showing off pictures of our family and talking about our families meetings over the years.



All too soon it was time for Mary to get Bunty back for lunch and we parted determined we will be back to catch up again before too long. She is a remarkable person with a sharp mind and a quick wit and a very positive outlook on life and her surroundings.



We have spent the last few days immersed in family history and so decided to take advantage of the facilities of the Otago Settlers Museum to research gaps in the family trees.



How that place has changed over the years and with everything available digitally recorded it made it a quick process to get as much information as appeared to be available from lists of passengers arriving on sailing ships through the mid 1800’s onwards.



We also got lots of information about other online resources we can follow up on after we get home to continue to build the family tree.



When we ran out of information to check on we headed up through the Octagon to the Public Library which also had a lot of information although mostly paper based for what we were looking for.



One of Gretchen’s discoveries was that a line of her ancestors had been buried in a family grave at the Northern Cemetery which was on a hill not far from our hotel overlooking the city.



After a couple of false starts on finding the section the grave were in we suddenly came across the plot where 6 of the family were buried together over a period of years. We guess this is one way for keeping the family together forever!



On our way out back to the car we passed by the memorial to Thomas Bracken who wrote the words to our national anthem and Gretchen gave me a rendition of the last three verses not usually sung at sporting events etc where a bit of national fervour is required.



No visit to Dunedin would be complete without dinner at Speight’s (local and most well known South Island brewery) Alehouse.



The restaurant has been set up within the old brewery and you get that authentic feeling although we are not sure if the label of beer is actually brewed in Dunedin any more.



The lamb with citrus was delicious as was Gretchen’s choice of Blue Cod, a species of fish we can’t buy fresh to cook in Tauranga. To celebrate our last night on holiday we made the most of the Central Otago wines with a glass of reisling and sav Blanc each to top off the dinner.



As with all BBA’s last night on the road it was pack up time and making sure all the bits and pieces that get spread around the rental car are gathered up and packed away.



We managed to get back to the hotel to take in the second half of a new TV favourite,MKR before we tried to puzzle out the mystery of how to connect for our one hour free internet time in our hotel room.



While we didn’t think we were connected all of a sudden our friends Ruth and Owen suddenly appeared on Skype to remind us that they will be there to pick us up from Tauranga airport tomorrow night and deliver us home. After they signed off we went back to puzzling out just how to connect.



It was a complete mystery although just before Gretchen gave up she did see the email she had typed suddenly show up as being sent. All very strange.



It had been a special day with catching up with Mary and Bunty and the time unravelling just that little bit more of the family history.

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