Dunedin and beyond

---

Friday 27 February

Leaving Aoraki Mt Cook National Park behind me this morning, I headed south then east, aiming eventually for Dunedin, probably getting there tomorrow.

My first stop was at Twizel as I needed fuel. As I pulled off the highway into Twizel I was feeling hungry and came across “The Musterer’s Hut” - now there, I thought, is a place where you are bound to get a good breakfast! I wasn’t wrong! When I ordered the “musterer’s breakfast” the man looked at me strangely but carried on - when it came out it was massive, but I gave it my best shot, and did, even if I say so myself, pretty well. Certainly beats the muesli and fruit I’ve had nearly every other day! I’ve always said one of the best things about B&Bs and holidays at home is the breakfast - well this was quite possibly one of the best breakfasts I’ve ever had. I chatted to the owners for a while as they stood amazed at how much of my plate I had cleared! They also own another place at Timaru which and suggested I stop in there if I’m passing - they do a “shearer’s breakfast” there apparently!

Back on the road again, and into farming country now that we’re out of the bounds of the national park. Most of the day was spent on the road, just stopping here and there for a rest. There are some really lovely little rural towns around here. Heading east I stopped in Kurow - I didn’t need any lunch after that huge breakfast, but I did stop for ice cream. The other night a couple from the north east had been raving about the TipTop ice cream and couldn’t believe I hadn’t tried it yet, so today, I had my first “hokey pokey single scoop” in a little town called Kurow. It was pretty good - there might be a few more of them consumed in the next couple of weeks!

After Kurow I passed by Lake Benmore, Lake Aviemore, Glentroon and Peebles - do you think there might have been some Scotsmen around here when they were naming the places!

I kept going and made it to the small town of Hampden, where I stopped for the night.

Saturday 28 February

Today, I reached Dunedin - the Edinburgh of the South. On my way from Hampden to Dunedin, I stopped off to visit the Moeraki boulders. I have to admit, they look a lot more impressive in the postcard than they did in real life! Basically they are spherical boulders that are dotted across the beach at Moeraki. In Maori legend, the boulders are the baskets that were washed ashore from the wreck of one of the ancient explorer’s canoes. Geologists have shown that they probably took around 4-5 million years to form under the sea bed and have been exposed by coastal erosion.

After that I took the scenic route to Dunedin, rather than just following the highway straight there. Lots of pretty little areas and nice little villages.

My camp for my stay in Dunedin was on the outskirts, at St Kilda, so I set up the GPS to get me through the city and over there in one piece - well, it told me to turn left when there was no road left in miles and then it told me I was going the wrong way and needed to do a U-turn - I was on the motorway at the time! Eventually we made it there and parked, with me vowing never to use the GPS again!

I was chatting to the people in the office and they were telling me that they’ve had nearly 2 months worth of rain in the last few days here. It seemed OK when I arrived, so maybe it’s passed.

Sunday 1 March

No such luck with the weather passing - it was pretty wild and windy through the night. I thought at one point I might wake up and find Kody and I had been transported to Oz, like Dorothy and Toto. In the end, I woke up still in Dunedin, so didn’t need to test whether clicking your heels in red socks works just as well as red shoes.

I had missed the bus into town, and wasn’t hanging around for an hour to get the next one, so I walked into the city and had a wander around.

Dunedin was settled by a group of mainly Scottish settlers. The head of the Dunedin settlers group was a man by the name of William Cargill. As with many of the settler groups, they were mainly Presbyterian and the minister also had a lot of clout - the minster here was Thomas Burns. Their aim was to re-create the good bits of Edinburgh and Scottish society (law, morals, religion) but to leave behind all of the unsavoury elements (drinking, gambling and prostitution).

On arrival, the first settlers had to stay on their ship until some makeshift shelters could be built - the advance party hadn’t managed to get very much built for them. They had to moor their ships further up the Otago peninsula as the harbour at Dunedin wasn’t deep enough for them, and then row in everything and everyone.

They set about re-creating Edinburgh, although given the terrain they had on the ground to work with, it wasn’t all that simple, but they kept as close as they could and put in all the street names as they are in Edinburgh. There are lots of steep streets in Dunedin, and one of them is recognised by the Guinness Book of Records as being the world’s steepest street.

There were Maori tribes already living around the area, and although not settled in what is now Dunedin, they did use the area seasonally for gathering food. It seems to depend on which account of the story you read, but some say that the Maori people had good relationships with the early settlers and helped them with building rafts and small boats etc and trading, although one quote from William Cargill that I read in the Settlers Museum suggests that he regarded the local Maori population as being beneath him. I don’t have the exact words but it was something like: there aren’t enough of them to warrant showing any kindness to. It would appear that that probably wasn’t the attitude of the majority of settlers here as later on, when tribes from the north came south looking for warriors to join them in their battles against the pakeha settlers in the north, they didn’t manage to convince any of the Maori from the Otago area to go with them to fight.

Despite initial hardships, the town kept growing and becoming more successful. Eventually, with the discovery of gold in the Central Otago goldfields, the city boomed.

Nowadays, the city is home to the University of Otago, and like any university town, teems with students at the weekends. I’m not sure but I think this might have been the end of the ‘orientation’ week similar to our fresher’s week.

During my wandering I came across the Water of Leith which flows through the Botanic Gardens. I also visited the Settler’s Museum which had good sections on the local Maori people who were here when the settlers arrived, and a section on the Chinese miners who came here during the gold rush, but the section on the Scottish settlers I thought was quite poor. You could look at photos of the rich settlers, and there were a couple of extracts from diaries about being seasick, but there were no stories really about the people, what they did before, what they did when they got here, what happened to their descendents and so on. Before reaching Dunedin I had picked up a book written by a local man who was a direct descendant of a settler from the second ship to arrive; most of my information comes from there rather than what I learned at the museum. I much prefer the Waipu settlers’ museum.

Monday 2 March

Today I drove up the Otago peninsula, heading to Tairoa heads where there is an albatross colony. On the way there, I drove through Portobello and Musselburgh, although neither of them is particularly like the ones we know at home! The albatross colony was fascinating. I had read about the fact that a grown albatross can have a wingspan of nearly 10 feet, and the lady who showed us around, told us that if they stood next to me, it would probably come up to my hip; but I don’t think I was really prepared for just how big these things really are! The colony is on a protected reserve, so you see them from inside an observatory, but you get quite close to a few of the nests, and they have video cameras trained on others so that you can see them too.

Just now, the chicks are at the stage where the parents are still feeding them, but they can be left alone for periods of time while the parents head off in search of food. The chicks are too fat to fly just now, so soon the parents will start reducing the number of feeds, in effect putting them on a diet, eventually not feeding them at all. After that the chicks will test out their wings, fly off to sea, and will circumnavigate the south pole area for a few years. After 4 or 5 years at sea I think, they will come back, probably to Tairoa heads, and find a mate. We were lucky enough to be able to see a chick in the nest, and also to see a grown bird flying in and over the observatory. Even though I was inside, I still felt myself ducking as it flew over! Due to the size of their wings, they are graceful flyers and gliders, but on landing, it’s a bit of a scramble, but then when they eventually come to a stop, they neatly fold up their wings and put them away for later.

After the albatross I went to see some yellow eyed penguins a little further down on the peninsula. This is on another reserve, although privately owned and funded - the farmer who owns the lad has allowed this area to return to the natural bush it would have been years ago before being cleared for agriculture. This bush is the natural habit on land of these yellow eyed penguins. They like cool, shady bush or caves to nest in, and they are quite solitary - they don’t like being too near other penguins, which is unusual for penguins - I’m used to seeing the emperor penguins on TV or at the zoo all waddling around together and sitting out on the rocks. This is their season for moulting, so they stand very still, hiding in the bush and wait until all their feathers have renewed. They can’t really do anything in this time - they’re not waterproof, so they shut down most of their systems and go into a kind of trance like state. They might waddle down for a drink of water, but that would be about it - the moulting will take around 4 weeks. We saw a few from the hides that they have set up around the reserve, but the penguins are free to go wherever they chose when they come back from the sea, so there are probably lots more in areas that we couldn’t see. The guide was telling us that they have found nests quite a lot further away from the sea than they would ever have expected - it turns out these little penguins don’t mind a mind of a walk to get home at night!

Tuesday 3 March

I spent most of this morning on the phone to Spaceships, trying to find the garage and then driving around Dunedin from garage to garage, trying to find someone who can fix the boot. Apparently the gas struts that hold the boot open need regassing - all I know is that I can open the boot but it won’t stay open, so I have to rest the door of the boot on my back to get everything out! A man in the campsite at Dunedin looked at it, then asked me if I was lifting the door high enough for it to stay open. Now, I know I’m not anything of a car expert, but, I do think I can manage to open the boot properly - I did bite my tongue and replied that it had been staying open fine for the last few weeks and that this just happened this morning!

Anyhow, after lots of trailing around and being told at the 3rd garage that I need to call a man out to do it, I gave up - I told spaceships my plans for the next few days and left them to find someone who would even look at it, and tell me where to go. They booked me in to the Toyota garage in Invercargill for tomorrow which fitted in with my plans perfectly as that’s where I was planning to spend the night tonight anyway (in Invercargill, not the Toyota garage of course!)

To get to Invercargill, I took the Southern Scenic Route which takes you through the Catlins, described as some pretty rugged and remote beaches, although, now that the State Highway and this touring route takes you right through them I’m not sure they can be considered all that remote - there was only one stretch on the main highway that hasn’t been sealed yet, and they are working on that. Having said that, just because they’re not remote any ore, doesn’t detract from how nice an area it is. I took a detour off the main highway to visit nugget point, named because there are big boulders in the sea that look like nuggets of gold when the sunlight catches them. I saw some seals and a sea lion. I stopped at Mclean Falls and had some great soup (lamb and vegetable) not unlike a lamb soup I made from the neck of the lamb I had in my freezer from the Andersons - delicious!

On reaching Invercargill, I got onto the road where my park for the night was. I must have missed the sign to turn into the park through as I got to the end of the road, which was the beach - no warning, just sand on the road, then beach, then sea! I got turned around just in time (I can’t take the van on the beach) and headed back only to realise that I must have driven past a huge sign for the camp! After checking in I was told I could park anywhere on the grass where I could see a power point, so I set out to find my spot. I just got parked up when a man came charging along telling me I couldn’t park there as it was his area! Not wanting any arguments I apologised, told him what I was told, and was starting my engine and getting ready to drive on, but he wasn’t impressed. It turns out that this campsite is full of ‘permanents’ i.e. people who live in caravans all year round, and he didn’t want anyone parking in the area he considers to be his front lawn! After that, the showers and toilets were gross. I think this has been my least favourite campsite so far, and, if asked for advice by anyone doing a campervan trip in NZ is to try not to stay anywhere where there are permanents (that’s probably too much of a generalisation, I know) - it was later that I noticed the advert in my campgrounds book for another site in Invercargill which actually advertises that it has no permanents, so if I see that notice again in the adverts, I will pay more attention to it.

Wednesday 4 March

After dropping Kody off at the crèche (aka the local Toyota dealership) I set off on a heritage trail around Invercargill. It’s a nice little town, named for William Cargill who was head of the Dunedin settlers. I saw the local water tower and some other nice buildings and then St Mary’s Basilica which was once described as the prettiest church in Australasia.

I went back to the garage to pick up Kody (unfortunately not fixed, so no more using the boot for me) and headed down to Bluff. On my drive through the Catlins yesterday, i could have detoured off the road to a place called Slope Point, which is the southernmost point on the south island, but I didn’t as it’s not a great road down there. In Bluff, there is a point called Stirling Point, and this is where State Highway 1 (SH1) begins - this is a road I know well - I’ve been on it up to the tip of the north island (well, almost, I didn’t make the last few kms!). This is my furthest south point. I’m, not going to Stewart Island which is the 3rd largest of the NZ islands, and so, this will probably be the furthest south I will ever travel in my life. The signposts show the distances to various places around the world - no sign post for Edinburgh here, but London would be our closest. I don’t know if the photos will show it, but I’m closer here to the South Pole than I am to the Equator. We’re in the ‘roaring forties’ here so it can get quite windy and chilly.

I drove up to the top of the Bluff hill lookout and got some nice views around and about.

After this, back on the road and heading for Te Anau. After last night’s campsite I was making sure I picked a good one for tonight, no matter what it cost! I had a brief stop in Tuatapere which according to the sign is the sausage capital of NZ; not much was open by the time I got there so after a quite tea got back on the road, but I’ll probably be back along this road in a few days so will maybe get some of these famous sausages then.

I reached Te Anau which is going to be my base for visiting Doubtful Sound, and maybe Milford Sound too. I got myself booked onto the trip for Doubtful Sound, then found my spot at the campsite. This is a good campsite, they are independently owned but are part of a group called Top 10, so they have to meet certain standards to be kept in the group - they tend to be a little more expensive, but generally have pretty good (very clean) facilities - I jumped straight in the shower!

Thursday 5 March

I booked my trip for Doubtful Sound yesterday, but decided against a trip to Milford, thinking maybe I would drive up there myself, seeing how I felt today. Instead, I decided to have a quiet day, wander around Te Anau, and relax, catching up with some postcard writing and posting, although, no catching up with the blog, hence the reason for this mammoth effort today!

It’s a lovely little town set on the shores of lake Te Anau, and is at the edge of the Fiordland National Park. The Milford Track starts quite near here too, and so, the town is often busy with visitors either walking the track or visiting the fiordlands on day trips from here. It was a beautiful day, and I didn’t really do much other than wander, write postcards and repack the van to get everything I use on a daily basis out of the boot and into the main van storage compartments, so a bit of shuffling about.

Friday 6 March

Lots of rain through the night. I don’t think I mentioned that the west coast is one of the wettest areas in the country, just like at home I suppose. It rains approx 2 out of 3 days here, but then, that means that all the rivers and waterfalls are flowing well, making the fiordlands more spectacular, so rain is good!

Our trip today took us by bus to Lake Manapouri, across lake Manapouri on a little boat, then a visit to the hydro-electric station at lake Manapouri (very similar to the one we saw at Ben Cluanie) and then by bus to the edge of the sounds to pick up our boat that was to take us through Doubtful Sound and out to the edge of the Tasman Sea. After all that, we had to do it all in the reverse order to get home. It was a lot of boats - I’m a bit boated out! Considering I’m not generally that great on boats, I’m not sure why it is I keep finding myself on trips involving boats! Having said that, I haven’t been ill on any of these boats other than the ferry, so that’s good.

The weather cleared and we managed to get some nice views of the sounds as we were leaving, then it was a lovely evening in Te Anau.

Saturday 7 March

Today I took the long way round to get to Queenstown. I wanted to go back to Tuatapere to see about getting some of the sausages I mentioned earlier, so although it wasn’t the quickest or shortest route, that’s the way I went. I bumped into a lady from my Doubtful sounds tour and when I said I was heading to Queenstown she thought I was lost and didn’t understand that I was just taking the long way round and knew from the map I could get there no bother! After all that though, the butcher shop was shut - can you believe it, shut on a Saturday morning! So, no sausages.

Back on the road and travelling through more nice rural towns and villages, stopping for petrol in one only to find that it too was shut on a Saturday!

I stayed the night in Arrowtown, which is an old heritage town from the gold rush days. At the campsite, I met Boo (real name Helen) and Gary from the US, and Colin and Wendy and Helen and Graham from Auckland, who were quite nice and insisted that I go and talk to them, so I spent the evening with them.

Sunday 8 March

I spent the morning wandering around Arrowtown and looking at all the restored buildings, and spent some time in their museum about the gold rush days - it was quite interesting. In the afternoon I headed back to Queenstown and got settled at my campsite there for a couple of days.

Queenstown is the adventure capital of NZ - this is where there seems to be the greatest concentration of adventure activities. You can do all the activities elsewhere too, but Queenstown seems to be the place to do it just now. Well, I’m not going to be jumping off a bridge on a bit of elastic any time soon, and I don’t actually know what Canyoning is, and although I was meant to go on a jet boat before (but it got replaced by the helicopter) I don’t think I’ll bother with that either.

I took a trip up the Queenstown gondola and got some nice views of the town below and the mountains around. Before I came here I was told that The Remarkables aren’t all that remarkable, but I thought they were OK!

Monday 9 March

I joined a trip today to visit Walter Peak station - the trip I really wanted to go on wasn’t running because there was no-one else going on it, so I ended up on this one. This started with another boat ride (that’s the reason I didn’t want to go on this one) - this was on a steamer called TSS Earnslaw and took about 40 minutes to cross lake Wakatipu. We went on our farm tour, and saw and fed some sheep and highland cattle and a stag and some deer - so all I can see at home quite easily. We had a sheep dog demonstration and a shearing and spinning demo too, which was quite interesting. Probably in a similar position to farmers at home, it costs them more here to shear the sheep than they make from selling the wool, but they have to shear the sheep.

Tuesday 10 March

I left Queenstown and headed for Cromwell which has an old heritage town district, made up of all the old buildings but some are used by arts and crafts people selling their quite modern wares. I headed through Bannockburn which is a wine producing area, although it does seem quite proud of its Scottish roots - I saw a few Scottish flags flying in people’s gardens.

After that I ended up in Wanaka, where I think I’ll stay for a few days. It’s a nice little town on the edge of Lake Wanaka, and there are some nice walks to be done in the surrounding area, including heading up to the Mt Aspiring National Park, or I could head up to Rob Roy’s glacier.

I went for a wander into the town in the afternoon and meandered along their millennium walkway which is a pathway lined with 2000 square tiles, many of which have local and worldwide historical facts written on them, depicting 2000 years of history - quite a nice idea I though; local people and businesses donated different squares.

So, if you're still reading, well done, you've made it to the end!
That's me all up to date again
Love to everyone
Claire
x

---