But we soon reached Oamaru, a small town that has a section which looks much like it did in the 1870's. It is called the White Stone City because it has many buildings made of white limestone quarried nearby. There was also a Museum and Art Gallery featuring local artists displaying North Otago scenery and a newly constructed crafts complex.
It was just outside Oamaru that I saw the first 'speed camera' warning sign. Having no inkling of what a speed camera was, I watched my speed and kept vigil on the power poles and street standards for the next several miles, but I never saw anything that looked like a camera. Later, I learned that these are cameras mounted next to radar guns in police cruisers or unmarked cars. When the radar detects a speeder, the operator, who need not be a police officer, snaps a photograph of the oncoming vehicle. The clarity is sufficient to identify both the license tag and the driver's face! In one case we heard about, the driver contested the accuracy of the photographic representation, but in court was further nabbed with a ticket for failing to wear his seatbelt! So far, I have not received any unwelcome mail for my driving despite my inclination to press the legal velocity envelope! (This may be endemic among FOC-tourists with law training; ask G4BUE about speeding in the United States!)
Moeraki. About 80 km north of Dunedin, we stopped to the see the famous Moeraki boulders. They are round boulders about a meter in diameter that accreted over millions of years from minerals in the sandy soil below the sea. Today, they are revealed by sea erosion and are really quite odd. It's hard to imagine them forming naturally. They do make great stages for tourist photographs, though!
Dunedin. The road to Dunedin is just magnificent in late November, with all sorts of flowers in bloom. Among the most common is broom, which was introduced a century ago by Scottish farmers as a hedge for sectioning farmland. Unfortunately, broom has spread everywhere, its seed pods capable of years of dormancy and immune to most attempts at eradication. Today, its yelloworange flowers dominate the landscape, with a similar plant called gorse causing the same problem.
We arrived at the visitor center in Dunedin at just a minute after 6:00 p.m., as the office was closing! However, I offered my call on a 2 meter repeater and immediately was answered by ZL4MB, Stan. He assisted us with directions toward 'hotel row.' We found a quaint B&B built in 1863 called the Sahara Guest House and stayed there the night. The young owner could not have been more accommodating and we were close to the visitor center and other sights in town. We ate at one of the more elegant restaurants of the trip called Cargill's. It was one of the few occasions we found lamb on the menu on the South Island. (We stopped at two other restaurants in Dunedin; one actually 'called around' to find us lamb!). After dinner we had tea with ZL4MB and his lovely wife Sadie. They offered us history of the Dunedin area as well as terrific dessert! We knew from our guidebooks that there was enough in Dunedin and the surrounding area to spend some days. But we only had one day, so we planned what we would see starting early the next morning and got an early start (again!).
Dunedin is large enough to require a car to reach important sights. We started with the famous Flemish Renaissance-style railway station, which features Oamaru limestone facing, a large square clock tower, red Marseilles roof tiles, colorful mosaic floor and wondrous train-theme stained glass windows. We then spent two hours at the interesting Otago Early Settlers Museum which featured a room filled with a variety of styles of early furniture and adorned to the ceiling on every wall with sepia photos of early settlers. It also has several period rooms that really make the visitor think for a second about what century it is. There was a room filled with musical instruments, and in an adjacent alcove there was a faithfully restored train steam engine called Josephine. On the more cerebral side, there was an informative exhibit of early Maori-European history.
Next, we went on a tour of Olveston, a stately, 35 room Jacobean home faced with Oamaru stone and Moeraki gravel [remember the Moeraki boulders?] built by the Theomins at the turn of the century as a 25th anniversary gift to each other. Theomin was a successful importer who installed all the modern conveniences of the time. He tastefully included now-priceless paintings and adorned the walls with artworks from the world over. There is Roman period bronze statue in the entrance foyer with a removable fig-leaf, something you must ask the tourguide about if you dare! Without revealing more, I would suggest that Olveston alone makes Dunedin worthy of a visit.
From Olveston, we had to walk up the steepest street in the world (steeper than San Francisco's Lombard Street), Baldwin Street. To be more accurate, I climbed to the top while Nina 'rested' about two thirds [she says 7/8ths] of the way up the 270 steps. It is curious that people live on this street -- when they drive they have to make the turn into their abutting driveways with sufficient speed to avoid the possibility of rolling over! Fortunately, there is no snow in Dunedin!
Finally, on the outskirts of Dunedin is Signal Hill (also known as Centennial Lookout) which overlooks the city and harbor area, quite an impressive view. I was especially pleased that the tourbus we encountered in the parking lot at the top started down before us rather than confronting us head-on along the steep, narrow and blind-curved access road. Perhaps of significance are some of the sights we did not see in the Dunedin area, including the Wilsons Distillery Whiskey Tours and tour of Speights Brewery; and the Otago Peninsula where one can see albatrosses, penguins, a Maori church, Larnach Castle (a Neo-Gothic, ScottishVictorian mansion) and Glenfalloch Gardens. Next time. We ate a very late lunch at Neffe's, which has some 500 whiskey jugs and Jim Beam Bourbon bottles on display along the walls and ceiling but perhaps would not make it into the Michelin Restaurant Guide! We left Dunedin in the late afternoon and headed to our next stop, Queenstown.
Queenstown. We tried to arrive at our destinations before dark, but our drive west through Roxburgh, Alexandra and Cromwell to Queenstown took a bit longer than we had planned. There was such beautiful terrain along the way that we felt compelled to stop to absorb the beauty, and occasionally take photos.
Queenstown is known as the jewel of the South Island, and was named by gold prospectors who declared it 'fit for any queen.' The city is situated near the Remarkables, mountains along the northeastern shore of Lake Wakatipu (53-miles long and 1280 feet deep). Sheepherders were first to settle the area but gold prospectors overwhelmed them. Today, Queenstown is a resort and the area is a vast high-country sheep region. We found a suitable motel, the Melbourne Motor Lodge, and headed the several blocks into 'town' to window shop and stretch our legs. The stores were still open as were the restaurants, so our day was once again extended later than we had planned. We also stopped at a tourist agency to book our activities for the next two days.
There are many activities offered in Queenstown, among them a lake cruise, hydrofoil ride, jet-boat trips, bungy jumping [which I prefer to leave to our esteemed editor!], fishing, walks, tours and visits to nearby towns. With limited time and (in my case) motion sensitivity, we decided to take the TSS Earnslaw, a 1912 coal-fired steamship launched within about a month of the Titanic's launching. The Earnslaw takes tourists across the lake for a visit to an operating sheep station. The ride is breathtaking, and the sheep station visit is really both enlightening and entertaining. One learns the use of different breeds of dogs, some of the habits of sheep, and even an opportunity to be surrounded by and feed both sheep and goats. Of greatest interest was the amusingly presented process of shearing sheep, with commentary offered by Conrad, who apparently is the son of the owner of the station. Tea was served on the veranda of the large house at the station, a very tidy arrangement and really lovely. We had our exciting moment when just before the Earnslaw was to leave Nina realized she left a bag in the house and she dashed up the hill to retrieve it. (Actually, I only saw her run that fast once before, and that was in Athens when we chased a taxi to get a ride to the embarkation point of our ship!) There was a tourist shop at the station which we discovered later offered wool items at relatively attractive prices. The sheep station consumed half the day, so we spent the remainder of the afternoon touring the city. In the early evening, following our first nap of the trip, we took the cable car up to the top of Skyline Point, overlooking the city from the Remarkables, and had dinner at the Skyline Chalet. It was a fantastic experience, though I remember the inadequacy of the lamb more clearly than the rest of the meal! I took a number of time exposure photographs of the city at night from the railing of the Chalet but never got them back from the developer. The only possibility I can imagine is that they were so fantastic that they were purloined [!].
Milford Sound. The next day was our tour of Milford Sound. The Sound is 14 nautical miles long, from the Tasman Sea to its inland terminus, lined with mountain peaks as high as 2200 meters and magnificent waterfalls. Captain Cook sailed by without realizing there was a sound here because from the sea it is so concealed.
Getting there was half the fun, with several stops enroute: at a beech tree forest, pampas-like open plain area, Te Annau (a tourist center) and along a mountain stream called Monkey Creek, to sip clear, cold glacial water. Our four hour ride took us through a long, unlit tunnel just wide enough for the bus to creep by oncoming traffic with less than a cm. on either side, as well as through magical gorges and by breathtaking waterfalls.
Once at the terminus of Milford Sound, we boarded our ship and headed toward the Tasman Sea, just as many fishing vessels and other tour ships do every day. It was plain from the first instant that we were in for a special treat. Before us loomed towering mountain peaks, and beside us were walls so steep we could not even see the tops. Along the way, there were glaciers visible deep within inlets, myriad birds, magnificent natural formations of rock caused by glacial action over the eons, and even sea lions basking (as best they can in overcast weather) on rocks nearly within arm's reach. It rains in Milford Sound about 750 cm. a year so it is rare that one visits on a sunny day, but it really doesn't matter much because the scenery is just beautiful. (One of my less favorite memories of Milford Sound, however, is of the leather skinned tourist in the back of the boat who chain smoked cigarettes, annoying everyone else as the air currents drew the smoke forward. He was the butt [pun intended] of a number of nasty comments, many by me.)
Our return ticket to Queenstown was to be by small plane. Unfortunately, the weather was too windy for the airplane so we had to take the bus again. This was really not so bad because it was getting late in the day and the illumination of the verdant scenery served to mesmerize all of us. It was like seeing new sights. We also dozed some of the way!
Once in Queenstown, we were ready for what we had missed for quite some time during our trip: a good pizza! Our tourbook suggested the Cow Pizza and Spaghetti House. While waiting for a table, we met a couple who turned out to be from less than 10 km from where we live, so we joined them for pizza and (their) bottle of New Zealand wine! It was a lovely evening and a fitting end to a remarkable day. But before we returned to our motel Nina I drove to the highest spot the local roads would take us, on a hill above the town but out of view of city and road nights. We then turned off the car lights to get accustomed to the darkness. |
