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Published: January 1st 2008
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Peel Forrest
The Big Tree Left Kimbell today. We had an excellent stay there. Back on the road, and our first stop is the Peel Forest. This is an old growth podocarp forest not far from Geraldine and has some great walks in it. We did a short hike to the Big Tree, which funnily enough is exactly that…a big tree. It is a 1,000-yr old totera tree and was huge. As we had a booking for the evening we departed for Dunedin.
Our host, Robyn, at Mt Dobson recommended a pub in Oamaru on the road to Dunedin. Unfortunately it was closed, but it gave us a chance to check out that part of town which has many old limestone commercial buildings which were quite ornate. There was also a beach which had penguins, but we chose to skip that to get to Dunedin on time.
Just before arriving at Dunedin, we stopped to look at the Moreaki Boulders. These boulders are regularly advertised in brochures for NZ. They are quite rare and old. Rather than being rocks that have washed up on the beach, they come from the eroded cliff side next to the beach. You can see some of them still
complete inside the cliff, ready to roll out on an unsuspecting beachcomber in hundreds of years’ time.
Once we made Dunedin, we dumped our stuff at our accommodation (which was right next to a rushing creek which was quite nice), and went to Speight’s Brewery for a beer tour. We learnt a lot about beer history. Stuff like the fact that the Egyptians used to call beer ‘bouza’ which is where we get the term ‘boozer’ from. One of the most interesting things was that the coopers who made the kegs used to get a daily beer ration of five litres for each two man coopering team. When the coopers would make these staff kegs, they would shave more wood out of the inside to produce an extra litre of volume. The coopers could either drink this, or were allowed to sell the beer to make a bit of extra money.
Once we were done with beer history, it was time to switch to beer appreciation. We were taught how to pull a beer, as well as the best way to sample various beers. There were six beers on offer. Matt went for the pale ale, whilst Emma
Speight's #1
The Brewery. Note the keg on the chimney. liked the apricot wheat beer. They also had ice cream to go with the dark ale which went very nicely indeed. Matt sampled quite widely, enjoying all of the Speight’s on tap. We finished at about 9:00pm, and managed to find a pub for dinner. We were still amazed at how light it still was, even at this time.
An interesting aside, Speight’s brewery has its own water spring for use in production. The brewery makes the water available via a tap to the public for free. It’s very nice water, and very popular. About 80,000 litres of it a month is taken via that tap.
The next morning, we did the tour at Cadbury World. Unfortunately, the factory was in summer shut down, so we only did a reduced tour. Not much in the way of freebies either. Plus, no factory seconds on sale!! That said, we still enjoyed ourselves.
We also drove up the steepest street in the world which is found in Dunedin. Baldwin St. has nearly a 1:1 grade, so all the houses are on a 45 degree slope. We only had time to drive up, but even that was a bit of
Speight's #2
Emmy getting some free water. a mission for the car.
After a spot of shopping, it was back on the road again. This time off to Te Anau Downs, our base for Milford Sound. Pretty miserable weather, but Milford Sound would surprise us.
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