Our tour being finished after breakfast, we started off with rather a fraught morning. We didn't get up until nearly 8, and about 8.30 Paul discovered that the car he thought he had booked for this morning was, in fact, not available. That left us with 90 minutes to breakfast and pack before we had to leave our hotel room, with nowhere to go! Fortunately, after spending about an hour on the Internet and the phone, he managed to secure another car, and we were picked up at 11, and were on our way by 11.30.
We had decided to go back to some places where we wished we had spent more time, so set off in the direction of Dunedin. We didn't intend to go right there, because there is an Elton John concert there tonight, so there aren't likely to be many beds.
The first part of the journey, across the Canterbury Plains, was fairly dull, I thought, but it became more interesting once the road came within sight of the sea. Paul began to find it difficult to focus after a few hours, so we decided to stop in Oamaru. We had visited there before, but only for half an hour, so we decided to see it more thoroughly this time.
We spent some time in the Visitors' Centre, where a short film gave us some brief history. The first settler arrived in 1853, but within 6 years, the town had expanded and flourished, largely because it had a harbour, and became an important port for the export of grain and wool, both of which were produced in quantity in the countryside around. There were gold rushes in the area too.
There were no trees at all near the town, but there was a lot of beautiful creamy white limestone, so that was used for building instead of wood. By the 1880s, the town was as big as Los Angeles, business was booming and had attracted a lot of banks.
The building you can see just to the left of this very imposing building is where we are staying tonight, incidentally.
The original Post Office became too small and was not sufficiently imposing,
so this is what was built instead.
We took a lot of photographs of buildings we had rushed past on our last visit, and had time to go and look at things properly. There are certainly a lot of buildings to see. There are whole streets of beautiful old buildings. This is the port area, lined with 19th century warehouses, commercial buildings and grain stores.
The town declined in importance in the 1890s and there was, fortunately, never enough money to demolish the buildings during the years when such demolitions were a popular way of 'modernising'.
We spent some time at the Heritage Radio (Wireless The Way It Was). It was broadcasting some old Beatles classics when we were there. You can go in and visit the studio at any time; you can see the DJ was on air when we called.
He played an old 7 inch disc during our visit, and spoke to us while it was playing. There is a wonderful collection of old radios and gramophones, not to mention old vinyl.
Not only can you see all this in Oamaru, it's online as well. If you want to listen to a broadcast, try
http://222.154.238.34:88/broadwave.asx?src=1&rate=1
I can't seem to get it to work on this iPad, but it works fine on the PC. There is a web site too - http://heritageradio107fm.webs.com/
We had lots of time to wander about and chat to the locals. One lady gave us a demonstration of hand-loom weaving and showed us a spinning wheel which was somewhat larger than usual. It was called a walking wheel; you started the wheel spinning, then you walked sideways, drawing out the thread. Then you had to spin the wheel again to wind up the thread on the bobbin. I wanted to take a picture, but the shop was crammed too full of stuff and nothing showed properly on the photo.
It had got quite late by this time, and shops were shutting. The livery stable was still open though. It had a couple of carriages in it, and though there were no horses there at that moment, there had been some there recently, judging by the horsey smell!
We met a lady in Victorian costume who told us how often the town was used for films. Apparently it was most recently used as a standin for what a New Zealand girl imagined London would look like; this was for a film called 'Mr Pip' which is to appear at the Cannes Film Festival next May, so we'll look out for that.
We admired the old station; there are some freight trains now, but they don't use this station. It's disused, but fortunately has been well preserved.
After supper, we went to see the penguins. This was the best penguin viewing yet. No photos are allowed, so I can't post anything here. But it was a great place to watch the Little Blue Penguin, and we saw 172! You sit on tiered seats under a roof, so you are reasonably comfortable and you don't get wet if it should rain. The penguins come up from the sea and cross right in front of you to go into their burrows. Their nesting area is protected by a fence to keep out predators, and there are little holes for the penguins to get through.
They usually swim back from where they have been fishing in large groups called rafts. They climb up the rocks, then they pause at the top and catch their breath and preen a bit. When they are ready, they cross to one of the holes, waddling as quickly as possible. Because it's dusk, and they have dark blue backs, their silvery fronts flash as they waddle. They tend to hold the flippers out a bit to balance, like me crossing a plank bridge. They make quite a noise calling to their mates, who are in the nesting holes. Some of them can't quite remember where they live, and have to scuttle about searching for the right burrow.
Just after 9.30, most of them had come in, and we walked back to the hotel. We saw 4 more on the way, we weren't sure if they were lost and looking for the correct place, or, more likely, as they were two pairs, they were looking for a nice spot to build a new nest; the main colony is now somewhat crowded.
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