Dunedin

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After a sunny, warmish day yesterday, today has been raining off and on all day and we're back in our winter clothes. However, that wasn't to be a worry as we had already determined that we'd visit some museums today.

Our first visit was to the Otago Museum which was modern and very impressive. Our main area of interest was the Natural History section on the top floor which had everything from earth sciences, animal, insect and plant information and local human history. My main interest was the paleontology exhibits which were fantastic! There was a huge pleisiosaur, a mososaur, sharks, whales, penguins, seals, fish, bones, shells and plants remains. As well were rocks and some minerals. It was gratifying to see how much I already had in my home collection even if my samples weren't as impressive. Lindsay was impressed too even though he doesn't have the same interest. Modern displays do not cram a whole lot of stuff in and have large print and photos for information so that boredom doesn't set in as museums used to be.

In other areas were ceramics, ancient objects and even an actual Egyptian Mummy - they were pretty small people back then. There must have been some good trading or swapsies with other museums for them to have the objects on display.

We had lunch at the Museum and spent many visits to the parking meter to feed it at $3 an hour. Fortunately we were close by the University where I want to visit the Geology Department. The fossil section is open to the public during the week so worth a visit if you're interested. It has a huge collection of most geological ages, but strangely not much to see on the Paleocene. The University environment was certainly "old school" with the displays in old glass cabinets and the working and student areas pretty ordinary. We arrived at the wrong time as there was no-one about until we were leaving when the students all turned up.

Otago University is impressive and despite the old buildings, very up-market with nice landscaping along the stream separating the area into two sectors. Surprisingly the campus is on rare flat ground.

Tomorrow we move south to the Catlins. Dunedin has been well worth spending time in. The steep streets will be a major factor that we will always remember the city for. We missed the Sports Hall of Fame at the Railway Station as it closes at 3pm. Never mind, you can't do everything. The weather was less than memorable, being cooler that what we're used to but we're 1000km closer to the Pole than home!

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Photos

A huge pleisosaur fossil
This is the largest fossil ever found in New Zealand