Christchurch 2nd January 2010

The last time I wrote I had just arrived in Dunedin and I blogged (is that correct?) a few immediate impressions. Maybe they were affected by the weather which was just like a late autumn day in Glasgow (and this is mid-summer!).

The history of the city is fascinating with the Free Church settlers from Edinburgh (via Lewis!?). There's a fantastic Otago Settler's Museum which fortunately begins with the Maori in around 1100, before going on to show the photos of the 340 arrivals from Scotland in 1848 and recounting their early history. I saw a couple of really old women with frightful Edinburgh accents, obviously descended from the original settlers. Apart from screwing up the location and planning-they superimposed Edinburgh and it's street plan upon a very hilly Dunedin-they did create a number of firsts, including New Zealand's first university, its first all girls school, as well as a robust banking system.

Dunedin is a small city - not much more than 100, 000 (excluding the 16,000 students who were on holiday), although it is spread over a wide area. It has an attractive location, but lacks the beautiful waterfronts of Auckland and Wellington. And it is a bit of a hotch potch as I said before. There are beautiful Victorian buildings - as you see all over the former colonial world-but the grey stone is different. The Railway Station is a work of art. However planning seems to have gone awry because there is an industrial area (including a Cadbury's factory very close to the centre of the city-and Cadbury's is the best of it!) and it's a bit of a mess. Beyond that is the University, Botanic Gardens and Otago Museum, all very attractive. The university has lots of greenery and an old central building with a tower supposedly replicating something in Scotland, but I'll need to check what. The tower isn't as grand as that at Glasgow University (!)-the bus tour guide announced it as a copy of Glasgow University but it can't be.

I did lots in my time in Dunedin: the Taieri Gorge Railway trip (supposedly one of the 10 best of such train journeys in the world!?! Embarassingly I haven't been on the West Highland Line in Scotalnd so I can't comment); New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame; Otago Settler's Museum; Otago Museum; and Botanic Gardens. But for me the highlight was the Elm Wildlife Tour I took yesterday to the Otago Peninsula (3:30-10:00pm) to see the albatross colony and a developing colony of yellow-eyed penguins. We were really lucky with the albatross as the wind got up, encouraging flight. They are huge, wing span over 9ft, and beautiful in flight. Maybe I'll write more later on the albatross. Our group then went to see a colony of yellow-eyed penguins: they have only relatively recently returned to the Otago Pensinsula and this company is highly conservation-minded and they've helped numbers expand significantly. They run a penguin clinic to restore injured penguins back to good health. The guides were passionate about their work. It was a pleasure to be with them. Anyway we watched then return to land after their day's fishing. They are small forest penguins so have their nests on the hillside above the beach. But they seem to arrive singly, so they appeared so forlorn doing their Charlie Chaplin walk up the beautiful long sandy beach; and also a bit stressed as there was a sea lion and one or two seals around. It was an absolute thrill then to see them meeting their partners and having a little kiss & cuddle-so beautiful and moving. The company has built some hides so you can see them up close. Fantastic day, the more so since the weather was a glorious, sunny 25C.

The wildlife trip was on New Year's Day. I went up to the Octagon (an open event area in the centre of town) the previous evening for the Hogmanay celebrations: they had a few bands playing and a firework display at midnight. There must have been about 1,500 people, I'm guessing, including many families with children, so it wasn't a drunken affair; and mostly tourists. The lead singer in the band playing at the bells didn't know the words for Auld Lang Syne, but it wouldn't matter since most people there didn't either (they might not even have been aware of Auld Lang Syne and especially its significance)! Still it was a pleasant, relaxed event-somehow I expected something more Scottish.

Today I drove to Christchurch, where I'm staying in a motel just outside town. The drive was less comfortable than any before-it was busy for the first time, with, I assume people going home after the holidays, and some of the overtaking was a bit hairy (the days have gone, when according to my son, Nick, I would only overtake on corners, on the brows of hills or when there was car coming in the opposite direction). It was also hot and I was feeling a bit sleepy. The drive took me through undulating country from Dunedin into the Canterbury plains and arable land (amazingly no sheep in sight!). Since I've come out of the mountains in the west, some of my generalisations need to be amended: I haven't seen a one-lane bridge again, which suggests that part of the reason for them is that they get washed away by floods or avalanches; and the towns up the east coast have traffic lights!

Enough for now. I may not continue this blog in Sydney but I'll try and make some observations on my New Zealand trip overall. Bye for now. Time to explore Christchurch.