Ships, trains and chocloate

6 February 2008

Dunedin, New Zealand

I’m not clever enough to know exactly what it takes to be called a city, whether its population or simply the amount of space a place takes up, but I do know how a place feels and some just feel like cities while some don’t. At the risk of upsetting a lot people, some of whom I know quite well and who know where I live, Dunedin has a feel of being a large town rather a city. This is not meant in a derogatory way at all; I did a tour yesterday and loved the place, both the look and the feel. It’s just that it’s like a large town.

We docked at Port Chalmers, a town that feels like the place I grew up in. A place where I was able to leave my bike on the side of the road while I went exploring, never having it even occur to me that it wouldn’t be there when I got back. A place where two or three cars stopped at an intersection would be considered a traffic jam. A place that you drive through in order to get to somewhere else, in our case from the ship to Dunedin itself.

I had a tour, another case of being an escort, and it promised to be a fairly sedate tour, mostly on the bus with only a couple of stops. I arrived at the bottom of the gangway prepared for the weather and only had to stand in the cold wind for a short time while passengers boarded the bus. Unlike Tonga this was a large comfortable touring bus, a real PA system and a driver who was a local and knew his way around. We all settled in and headed out through the port gates for three and a half hours of Dunedin Highlights.

The drive into town was rural, through the occasional field with grazing sheep and past houses perched above the road on the beginnings of the hills that ring and dominate this city and with driveways that would certainly test my ancient vehicle. The day was sunny but with that cold wind that will cut through you when you allow it full access but allows pockets of comfortable warmth in the lee. Stand on the right side of the bus when you got out and it was warm and pleasant, stand on the wrong side and you would realise that there is nothing between this part of New Zealand and the Antarctic.

The bus driver/guide was an older gentleman, of an age with the passengers, and he had a gentle, rumbling voice that worked well with the laid back commentary he gave, even if a number of the comments and expressions that caused deep chuckling on his part may have passed over the heads of most of the passengers. His pointing out of the childhood haunts of well known New Zealand sportsmen may have interested me but meant little to the rest.

Our first stop was the train station. Not a normal stop for many tours in many cities but this station had a beauty all of its own and is something that the locals are justifiably proud of. Built of black and white stone and complete with towers and spires, it sits in front of a perfectly manicured garden of bright summer flowers. The inside lacks anything that could be called modern, until you wander into the actual ticket selling and practical part of the station kept unobtrusively in a side room. They have managed to retain the Victorian charm and feel of the building and the tiled floors and stained glass windows reminded me of a time of steam trains and when a gentleman wouldn’t have been seen outside without a hat, a tie and sharp creases. The station is also home to the New Zealand Sportsman’s Hall of Fame and I would early have loved a much longer stop to be able to have gone through but it wasn’t to be and we all piled back into the bus. Dunedin will make it onto my list of places to return to for that hall alone.

From there we drove around the town, having the buildings pointed out to us. The Cadbury factory, obvious with a bright purple silo, being an attraction in its own right with a tour and souvenir shop. My cabin mate returned from the factory proudly bearing two large plastic bags of chocolate he had purchased and photos of him in front of mounds of chocolate. We drove around the town/city and looked at the buildings, we stopped for a short time in the Octagon or town square (it’s eight sided, get it?) so we could take photos of Robby Burns’ statue. We stopped for a time at a lookout atop a hill that gave us a view of the town and the port.

For me though the highlight was an hour long guided tour of Overton House. The house was built in the very early 1900’s and remained in the possession of the same family until the last member died childless and donated it to the city. It was saved from being bulldozed and turned into a museum, a slice of time preserved exactly the way it would have been when it required 7 servants to run the house and care for the 4 family members who lived here. All of the fittings and furnishings are the actual ones that originally decorated the house and it almost feels a little voyeuristic walking through with family photos and effects still in place. It’s fascinating though and an interesting view of life in that pre Great War upstairs downstairs time.

We drove back to the ship and I had time to run quickly into Port Chalmers and buy some Cadbury chocolate and a couple of bags of Bluebird green onion chips before the ship weighed anchor.

I’ve been told by a friend (thanks Jax) that it’s a pity that the port is on the wrong side of the harbour. The other side, “The Peninsula”, has Larnach Castle, Tairoa Heads which has the albatross colony and a seal colony and a Maori Marae. If or when I go back they will be on my things to visit list but for now I have to say that I preferred Christchurch to Dunedin.

Today we are going through Fiordland. It’s a day of scenic cruising and as such the casino is closed, allowing me time to walk the decks with my camera and take photos of the scenery. The weather is perfect, that crispness in the air and a blue sky with just enough cloud to make it interesting. The mountains seem to come right down to the water’s edge as we sail up these narrows sounds and I’ve gone a little crazy with my camera trying to capture on a little screen exactly the grandeur that I’m seeing when I stop looking through the view finder. We’ll be entering Milford Sound shortly so I’ll be posting this and then rushing back outside.

We have a couple of sea days and then arrive in Sydney. It’s going to be a little strange being there, in a lot of ways it’s going to feel much more familiar than what I’ve been seeing for the last few days and I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to do there. Am I going to feel a compulsion to buy souvenirs or will I just buy a few magazines and wait patiently for the more “exciting” places ahead?