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Published: April 10th 2006
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Greetings friends and all!
This isn’t an easy blog to write, as to be honest we haven’t really done that much for the last week and a half. We were just saying today how it’s probably for the best that we’ve now left the South Island and made our way north, as we’ve been getting a teensy bit bored. Some might wonder how we could be feeling listless in this stunning country filled with beautiful and charming scenery, amazing perfumed aromas of the wild flowers and abundant pine forests so prevalent down this way, and the warmth & friendliness of the NZ people. The answer is a simple one. The South Island is so completely similar to Scotland, our home, that we had begun to wonder whether we are still using our precious time away from work most effectively…………..???
Nevertheless, let us fill you in on what we’ve been spending our time doing since our last update;
INVERCARGILL
It was about a week ago that we left the Sounds and headed southwards down to Invercargill - for why?- well to go as far south as we could possibly go of course - that is without leaving the main(ish)
land of the South Island. Invercargill isn’t the most southern town, ‘Bluff’ is, however we decided to break our journey here is it’s on the way. There’s not a great deal to say about this place, other than it’s a town comparable in size to Hamilton (Scottish Hamilton that is) with less interesting shops (I know, it’s hard to believe), and a diminutive handful of decent cafes and restaurants. There is however, also a profusion of cattle feed stores and garages specialising in tractors, quad bikes and dairy machinery. Not to mention grain refineries and pasteurizing plants. Yip, you guessed it, it’s a farm industry support town! We stayed here for one night, about 12 kms outside town, because we weren’t allowed to park-up in the central campgrounds due to the mystery of a missing sticker on our van declaring that all our electrics are up to date and will work without fail until at least the year 2525!!?? The place wasn’t that nice anyway and the guy who worked there had a shifty look about him, not to mention that the site was also doubling up as the farm show grounds. There wasn’t a smell on the day we
visited but they just weren’t that homely if you know what we mean. We took advantage of a good internet place in town which charged a competitive price of $4 per hour to do some blog updates, (sorry about the 9 million photos on the last blog BTW!) and then it was time for us to ship out. So to speak.
BLUFF
The next day we drove down another 25kms or so to Bluff which lies at a latitude of 46.5 degrees South. We spent about an hour there checking out the views from a prominent lookout point high above the town. There are two things noteworthy about Bluff:
1) It’s famous for it’s Oysters, which are harvested once a year, with the season lasting for approx 2 months. We think it might have been oyster season when we visited, but we didn’t know this at the time of visiting (we found out later from a geezer in a garage about 50kms up the road on the way to Dunedin) and didn’t have any oysters while we were there anyway - it was about 9:30am when we were there and who’d want to eat oysters at that time of
day? Come to think of it, who’d want to eat oysters at any time of the day? (natch Shaz is writing this bit as Alan would OBVIOUSLY eat oysters at any time of the day, especially those of the Kilpatrick variety!!!).
2) The second thing that people might visit Bluff for, and probably the more common reason, is that this is where you would catch the ferry to take you to Stewart Island, which is a virtually unspoilt island about 2 hours sail away.
DUNEDIN
Well, we’d been really looking forward to going to Dunedin, home of NZs 1980’s Indie Pop explosion! We know this ‘pop explosion’ happened as Alan has some vinyl at home that proves it, right! We were hoping to hit upon some rocking vibes and hip café bars with ad-hoc acoustic sets being strummed out by black attired beatnik types, or maybe catch some angst ridden poets, possibly writing frightening verse to a buck toothed girl from Luxembourg in a Morrissey stylee….. But disaster! There was none of that! The nearest we got to ‘cool’ was a scruffy Jazz trio in a burger bar / restaurant which had been unfortunately dipped by their instruments
in ‘Santana’ river. The biggest, most heinous crime was that nobody clapped (as EVERYONE knows they are supposed to do) after the solo bits. Not on is it? Anyway - our general verdict of Dunedin was that is was an OK place. Not super WOW amazing or anything - just pretty good. We spent a lot of time at the flicks while we were here as the weather was unfortunately quite rainy. Our Barry Norman-esque spell allowed us to cover V for Vendetta (7 out of 10), Capote (8 out of 10), Goodnight and Good Luck (6 out of 10), Mystics (5 out of 10, but in a lovely jaunty Irish caper sort of way) and Mrs Henderson Presents (7 out of 10, although it nearly lost a point due to Will Young being in there singing, and he bugs Alan.). Incidentally there are, point of fact, some fabulous cinemas in Dunedin. All retro and cool - and the interiors are just as plush and spacy as the exteriors. It’s hard to remember much else that we did while here, with one of the highlights (if you’ll pardon the pun) being that Shaz had her hair dyed a rich mahogany
The new hairdo.
Slytherin Housemaster or top late 90s pop star? You decide! (clue: standin in rooftop shoutin out baybe I'm ready to go!) with black hints throughout. It’s very different as we’re sure you’ll agree - see photos below - and whilst we do love it, we can’t quite decide whether it’s more Severus Snape, or Saffron Republica. The main problem will be the maintenance of course, what with her being natural blonde an all. (cough / ahem etc!!!).
Many people claim that Dunedin is very alike Edinburgh, what with the name link. It’s not. It’s completely different, and if you go there expecting there to be anything more similar than the street names and some hilly residential areas, then you may be disappointed. The only other thing that might qualify as a parallel is the ‘University town’ connection - there does seem to be quite a few students. Anyway - here are some street names found in Dunedin: George Street, Princes Street, Queen Street, Moray Place, Frederick Street, Hanover Street & Great King Street. Practically the whole of the New Town come to think of it. Note that there is no Leith Walk (maybe too scummy a connection?) however here is Leith Valley - which we think sounds altogether nicer, conjuring more picturesque aspects in our minds’ eye.
We’re now
The Bard
Unfortunately, although this nice statue of Rabbie takes centre stage in the main Octagon of Dunedin, he is covered in bird poo which sort of detracts from the poetic example displayed. in Wellington, dear folks, we arrived late yesterday, and we plan to stay here for just another night before we start heading further north to visit Alan’s rellys. Last night the weather was very, very, very, very pants. Major thunder and lightning and poor Beryl got soaked - but she kept us dry, good lass! Wellington looks nice - quite arty farty with heaps of theatres & museums etc and seems to have some quality shopping opportunities too. It’s our intention to maybe come back at some point once we’ve been to see some big volcanoes and mud baths and geysers - that’s what we are really looking fwd to seeing now!
So we’ll sign off here for now as we have an appointment with a Tandoori Platter in the city centre, just about now….. This is our treat as we’ve been on the Atkins for about a week and we’ve been SO good. We have both gone down a belt notch, and believe you us, our jeans are well glad!
We’ll see ya’s all later,
Shaz & Al. xxx
PS: Soz the photos are not that interesting this time. We’ve hardly had our cameras out this
This is for Shazzas sister Cathy.
This was a cafe in the centre of Dunedin and all the menu items were actually transferred into Jethro Tull song titles.
Sad but true, however we know you will think its amazing. last week as its been so driech.
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Claire Miller
non-member comment
New Hairdo
.......is fab