We woke this morning to bright sunshine, and reflected on how lucky we are. We heard on the news that west coast of South Island has just had 250mm of rain (that's nearly 10 inches) in 48 hours, and there is a lot of flooding. Cows and sheep have drowned in the fields, and in Greymouth, the Grey River is less than a foot from overtopping the flood wall where we walked seven days ago.
After breakfast we had a short time to explore the city before we had to be on our way. We walked down the very steep hill to the Octagon, an eight sided open space which marks the city centre. The is a statue of Robert Burns in the middle, so I took a photo. I had to have the gull on his head though - it did not respond to being told to shoo!
I was obliged to spend some time in the Telecom shop, trying to extend the life of my 3G Internet connection which was due to expire in a few days. I have no idea who designed their method of topping up the data, but it is set up for phones not iPads, is impenetrably complicated and not in the least intuitive. Anyway, it seems they gave me the correct advice as to how to do it, so I have lots of data and another month's worth of time - which I won't need, as we are only here until December 10th.
We went to see the cathedral, built in 1919 which replaces one built in the 1860s which was demolished to make way for this one.
The chancel was not completed until 1971 though, and you can see the difference.
The bus drove us through the town and down to the railway station, which is an amazing building.
The inside is also quite special
and it has some good mosaics on the floor too.
Opposite the station are the Law Courts and the original prison, now the central police station. They are both very gothic looking buildings.
The bus took us up the winding drive to the top of Signal Hill. There were wonderful views over Dunedin, both the town and the harbour.
There is a monumental memorial to the first pioneers, and a big chunk Edinburgh Castle rock.
Our last visit was to Baldwin Street, which is reputed to be the steepest residential street in the world. It is certainly very steep - much steeper than it looks in the photograph.
It wasn't the walking up I found difficult - I just went slowly - it was the walking down. It is hard not to find yourself going faster and faster. Crossing the street at the steepest part is pretty difficult too, it's hard to keep your balance.
After that, we left Dunedin and set off for the Moeraki Boulders, where we also lunched. The boulders were formed on the sea bed about 60 million years ago as lime salts gradually accumulated around a hard core. We didn't see as many of them as you see in the postcards, because it was high tide so some of them were under water. Nevertheless, they are an interesting sight, and many of them are quite big. A passing tourist sat on one so his sons (or grandsons) could take a photo, so I just took one as well.
Not far away is the town of Oamaru, which has the best preserved collection of historic public and commercial buildings in New Zealand. They were built in the 1880s from Oamaru stone, a local cream coloured limestone. As we only had half an hour there, it was hard to see everything, but some of the buildings were really lovely.
What also took my eye was the Steampunk, an old steam engine which has been modified with guns, torpedoes, a skeleton, a dragon's head and lots of steam pipes. If you put $2 in an attached box, steam comes out of every orifice, and it makes steam train noises!
I was also very taken with the shop that made wonderful soaps that looked just like cakes or puddings. I wanted to buy something, but there was no time to choose anything.
We drove down the banks of the Waitaki River, past several of the dams of the hydro development scheme. The Waitaki Dam was the first we passed, noticing that the water is a wonderful bluish-green. The Aviemore dam is the next, and we crossed that to drive along the far side of it. Then we crossed back across the Benmore dam, getting some lovely views.
We eventually stopped at Omarama, a tiny place which seems entirely dedicated to tourists on their way between two more interesting places.
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