Dunedin New Zealand
"The
Antipodean Edinburgh"
(This is the text of a magazine article I wrote a year or
so ago. It's been slightly modified to bring it up to
date - DRM.)
"The Edinburgh of the South". The finest Victorian city, according to the locals, in the Southern Hemisphere. Whatever else it might be, Dunedin is one of our too-often overlooked travel gems.
If you can convince the average tourist to go there at all, they usually make Dunedin an overnight stop on the road from Milford Sound to their return flight out of Christchurch - an alternative to "been-there-done-that-bought-the-T-shirt" Queenstown and the road through the centre of the South Island.
On a busy travel schedule you can only afford to stop for the things that are unique, different, important.
How unique do you want? This is the only place in the world where you can take a short drive to see an albatross colony.
How different? Here's a city - built by men of power and property at the height of their gold-rush affluence - that has never been upgraded with a bulldozer, it's 19th-century architectural heritage preserved by fickle prosperity.
How important? If you are into "green tourism" how important is the nesting site of the world's oldest and rarest penguin species, the yellow-eyed penguin, whose numbers dwindle each year, crunched by the impact of habitat changes, introduced predators and lately a particularly devastating viral plague.
Or, if you are into trains, how important is it to take a ride on a restored Victorian railway masterpiece, along tracks driven by Scottish engineering skill through some of the most rugged and spectacular scenery in the region?
Let's start with the unique and the rare. Nowhere else in the world can you take an easy car ride to visit an albatross colony.
At Taiaroa Head, on the tip of Otago Peninsular, at the Royal Albatross Colony, this lord of the ocean winds nests and breeds. The tours that visit there are a masterly blending of the needs of the environment and the desires of tourists.
The Department of Conservation, which manages the site, says "The unique privilege of visiting this small colony is strictly controlled to ensure its conservation".
Unlike a lot of Disneylandish tourist attractions where nature is primed and prompted, primped and preened to perform on cue, there are no guarantees about a visit to Taiaroa. You may be fortunate and see some awesome power flying from the largest seabird on earth, with its 3.3m (11ft) wingspan. Or you may have no more than a chance to get within 50m of chicks waiting patiently for the return of their big-momma meal tickets.
But that's the luck of the draw in natural tourism. You don't always get what you want, but at least it's the real deal.
There's a nesting site of the yellow-eyed penguin at Penguin Place out by the Albatross Colony, one of a few to be found along the coasts here. They, probably the oldest penguin species on earth, are dwindling in number under relentless attacks on breeding habitats and the depredations of ferrets and feral cats, with only about 5000 - 6000 individuals left. About one quarter of these live in the east coast of the South Island and Stewart Island. The rest live on Campbell and Auckland islands, about 600 km south in the wild Southern Ocean.
Unlike other penguins, the yellow-eyed does not clan together in noisy colonies. It breeds in the privacy of a secluded nest, traditionally in the cool and shade of a forest. As in other places on earth, the forest has been driven back in headlong retreat before the onslaught of man's demand for grazing and cropping country. And as it went west, so did the penguins.
They come ashore each evening, just on dusk. Surfing in on the waves, or scrambling nimbly on to rocks, crops full of fish-and-squid soup, they trudge across the beach and waddle their way inland to the nest site, sometimes more then a kilometre from the sea.
This, however, is not for your loud, boisterous, flash-happy "tourist". The birds are cautious and clear-sighted. The presence of strangers on the shore will keep them at sea until, literally, the coast is clear.
No, this is for the quiet and the patient. Photography needs a long focal length lens and fast film.
How about some history? A mad Member of Parliament, William Larnach, built Larnach's Castle. in the 1870s. It took 200 workmen five years to do the job - and that was before the advent of the 40-hour working week. It fell into disrepair, was used as an asylum for a while, until the Barker family took it over some years ago. For a long time they laboured with little in the way of finance or assistance, but gradually the property was restored to its former grandeur and today it's one of Dunedin's top attractions. You can stay there too and dine in style in the castle dining room.
While you are out that way, stop and have a look at the "Disappearing Gun". Back in 1856 - that was before perestroika and glasnost and the Fall Of The Wall you know - there was the distinct possibility of the Brits and the Russians having a set-to about Afghanistan. The more things change, the more they stay the same, right? But nervy New Zealanders took to defending their harbours with heavy artillery and here at Taiaroa, now fully restored, is a 6-in Armstrong breach loading gun, regarded as state-of-the-art high-tech when it was installed.
It's called a Disappearing Gun because it is mounted in a pit below ground level. When the loaders were ready to fire, the gun popped up, popped off, and the recoil lowered it back below ground again. Jazzy stuff in pre-intercontinental ballistic mass-destruction 1885.
While you're doing the round trip of the peninsular you'll naturally have to have a look at Glenfalloch Woodland Garden. It's worth a stop any time of year but at rhododendron time, it is on the "important" if not "different" list.
New Zealand has a climate that is perfect for the beautiful rhodo. Indeed, but for the fact that the place is thousands of km from a source of stock in its native China, they would probably be the dominant local species.
In two places in the country they are particularly resplendent - Mt Egmont in Taranaki and Otago.
They start flowering in June and continue blooming until December, but in October they reach a glory peak. Glenfalloch isn't the only rhodo garden in town. Look in also at Tannock Glen, and the Rhododendron Dell, in the Botanic Gardens. Larnach's Castle grounds also have extensive plantings.
Otago Peninsular - or, to give it the original Maori name, Otakou - is a full day's work even on the tightest schedule.
And then there's another way of "doing" it - from the water. Monarch Wildlife Cruises have rightfully built a reputation as one of the best "eco" attractions in the country. You'll get a great seaward-side look at the Albatross colony, as well as glimpses of all the other marine life around the region, especially penguins and seals.
But there are other treasures too precious to pass by in this city.
Probably the most important is Olveston, home of a pioneer merchant prince.
The Theomin family built it in the early years of the century. They were a wealthy lot and travelled widely, collecting all sorts of exotic and expensive trinkets, baubles and bright shiny objets. After the parents died, their daughter, Dorothy, lived on in the house. It was never "modernised" and was indeed maintained exactly as it had been during their parents lifetime. Thus, when Dorothy Theomin died in 1966 and bequeathed it to the city we were left with this exquisitely detailed and accurate snapshot of life in Edwardian colonial New Zealand.
That's it's real appeal - this is not a recreated museum piece. The furniture isn't the usual motley collection of whatever could be assembled to fit. The whole thing is a unique, unified whole.
On the last occasion I was there, the dinner table was set exactly as it was on the night that Sir Truby King was a dinner guest - a dinner at which he first suggested the formation of the Royal Society for the Protection of Women and Children, better known as the Plunket Society, the institution that to this day is the frontline of paediatric care in this country.
The name places were original. The silver and the china were the same - the very same - used that night. One could almost catch echoes of the discussion that must have ebbed and flowed back and forth on that momentous evening when one of the nation's great institutions was being forged.
While you're doing the history round have a look in at the Otago Museum. As Otago rode high on the floodtide of gold streaming out from the hinterland valleys, the museum directors were able to indulge their passion for collecting.
The Melanesian and Polynesian halls - the Pacific Collections - are amongst the finest in the world. And in the Maritime Hall the big item - literally - is the skeleton on a blue whale.
If Dunedin has anything to give the nation it is the heritage of its beautiful buildings. They survived the barbarity of redevelopment because nobody wanted to redevelop Dunedin. As a result we have a treasure trove of Victorian architecture.
People are often
amazed when I suggest that they make a special visit to
the railway
station. Built when railways were at the apogee of
their commercial and technological power, the Dunedin
station is a celebration of the confidence and certainty
of its masters.
When the then Prime Minister, Joseph Ward, laid the foundation stone there was no doubt that railways were the transport marvel of the age. Little did anyone in the crowd know that just north a ways, at Temuka, Richard Pearse's home-built aeroplane had already made a hop skip and a jump to create a technology that would put an end to the transport primacy of steel wheels on steel rails.
The building is a paroxysm of Victorian design excesses. Little wonder that they christened George Tripp, the designer of the place, Gingerbread George.
Take a 20min walk around the centre of the town, starting in the Octagon. You'll pass the statue of Robbie Burns, whose nephew was the first religious minister in the fledgling town. Later, another churchman huffed that it was typical of Burns "wi' his back to the kirk and his face to the pub."
The pub, the European, is long gone - replaced by a bank, which says something about the Scottish roots of the city - but the church is worth a look especially because of the way in which early and modern design has been seamlessly melded. The original structure was started during World War 1 but the final addition, the chancel, wasn't built until 1971. It's the stone-vaulted roof in the nave that's worth seeing - the only one of its kind in the country.
Walk on past Burns and down the street towards the Railway Station. On the right is the Law Courts, designed and built in 1899. If you can sneak in, take a look at the High Court. Notice the statue of Justice above the doorway - she has no blindfold and is believed to be only one of three in the world where Justice is not blind.
To your left as you leave the Railway Station, on the other side of the street next to the Law Courts is the police station.
Like the Law Courts it was the work of John Campbell, whose design was heavily influenced by the English architect, Norman Shaw, the man responsible for London's New Scotland Yard. Totally symmetrical, it was a reaction against the excesses of Victorian stylism - of which the Railway Station is a glowing example. Unfortunately the building lost its chimneys in 1933 and with it it lost some of its architectural balance.
Just along the road from the Railway Station on the same side, is the Otago Settlers Museum. Head that way and note the kerosene lamp standard outside. It's the sole survivor of the 53 lamps that lit the city's main street in 1863. Dunedin was the first city in NZ, and among the first in the world, to use kerosene street lighting. The engineer, John Millar, was so proud of his lamp stand design that he had his name embossed boldly on each of them - and if you have a look on the base, there it is, "Millar, City Engineer". Man proud of his work.
Have a look now at the railway engines. JA 1274 was one of the mighty steam locos used on the main trunk line that linked Invercargill to Christchurch. It was built at the vast Dunedin Railway Workshops and in 1971 when it finished its days as a working locomotive, was given by the then Minister of Railways, as a reminder of the long association between Dunedin and the Railway Workshops.
Like much else that has passed away, the workshops were written off when the Railways Department was corporatised and sold off a few years ago.
But some of railway's splendour lives on. The line through the Taieri Gorge is not only a step back into that history, but it also takes you through some of the most dramatic landscapes in the country. Rugged is the adjective usually used. But it's not quite right. It's more than that.
You'll marvel at
the engineering and stonemasonry skills that drove the
rails through such a sheer-sided rough-cut canyon. The
train has a schedule that depends on the season. Call at
the Dunedin Visitors Centre for details.
Speaking of which, the DVC is one of the best in the country at providing useful accurate information. It should be your starting point for an exploration of this unique, different, interesting city.
If you have small persons at heel, or simply if you just happen to like chocolate, the Cadbury factory tour is an essential item on the see-and-do list. Took my own band of bandits there not long ago and they weren't the only ones that loved it. The factory is right in the middle of the city - do it as part of the walking tour.
Fancy a pint? Or more accurately an insight into the brewing of that pint - take the Speights Brewery tour which traces the history of brewing from Babylonian times to the modern day, including a look at the actual brewing process in action. naturally it finishes in the tasting room!
And if you are peckish here's a couple of local institutions: Best Cafe, 30 Stuart St - straight forward kiwi tucker at old fashioned prices (and you just never know which international celebrity you'll catch there). Or the Marlow St Pie Factory, 377 King Edward Pde, South Dunedin - one of the country's finest of pie bakers.
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All you need to know about a visit to the place where God set the contrast and colour and man hasn'nt fiddled with the dials.
What, hopefully, you'll get out of this mish-mash of peripatetic ramblings.
Background bumpf on the country.
Visas, customs, immigration, duty free shopping, and getting away from the airport. Bloody important if you don't want to be arrested on arrival.
Moving on . . . by road or rail, by air or by sea.
"nuff said.
What to see, what to do, and why to go there.
Diving, fishing, golf, rafting, sailing, skiing - and more.