Dun 'edin South
Trip Start
Oct 15, 2007
1
74
97
Trip End
Aug 24, 2008
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Dunedin,
South Island,
New Zealand
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
The peninsula is indeed very nice, but there's nothing approaching a major road running around it, so the supply of little scenic rest-stop layby things we generally used as campsites was sadly lacking. At Taiaroa Head, the peninsula's end, is an albatross sanctuary, whose car park already contained a few camper vans. Hmmm. This may very well do us.
The sanctuary was just shutting up shop for the night but Kirsty smiled sweetly at them and they let us in to use their loos. A lot of the vans then left, leaving us as the only campers, so we no longer had the reassurance of safety-in-numbers, but that was of minimal concern really - we were unlikely to be moved on. Of greater worry was the fact that we had parked alongside some fairly large vans which were protecting us from the wind - the really extraordinarily powerful wind - to which we were now exposed. Perched on a cliff top, rocking wildly from side to side, we were probably not that likely to blow over...but to be hit by something with that sort of force, we could lose a window. We tucked in for shelter next to the one remaining van - which later left anyway - by a low grassy bank whose benefits were largely psychological.
We fed ourselves with a large salad whose healthy leafy greenness of course counteracted the effects the couple of eggs, chunks of fried sausage and croutons we also included...and the bottle of wine. Lettuce and cucumbers work wonders for one's nutritional conscience.
Waking up in an intact van, we popped over to see the albatrosses. Albatrosses? Albatross? Albatri? Large birds.
The Royal Albatross Colony is the world's only colony of breeding albatross on an inhabited mainland. Between 1914 and 1919, Royal Albatross were known to land at Taiaroa Head, which is just 30km from the centre of Dunedin and counts as being within the city limits. More usually a fan of remote, storm-bound islands for nesting sites, albatross don't tend to nest so close to human populations. In 1920, the first egg was found and the colony was set up to protect it. However, due to the interest of the local population, especially their penchant for taking eggs as souvenirs, the colony didn't manage to produce a fully fledged chick for some time. In 1937, Dunedin ornithologist Dr Lance E. Richdale set up measures to protect the colony from interference, and was rewarded in 1938 when the first Taiaroa reared chick flew. Now a protected nature reserve with a population of around 140 of these endangered seabirds, they celebrated the hatching of chick 500 in January 2007.
Albatross are amazing creatures, and the Northern Royal Albatross, the species at Taiaroa Head, is no exception. They are enormous. They have slim wings, but a wingspan of up to 3 metres/9'6". In order to fold that much wing whilst they are on the ground, they have an extra joint, allowing the wing to fold into three, instead of the more usual two pieces.
Also on the headland was the Armstrong Disappearing Gun. The disappearing gun as a functional concept was the brainchild of Captain Colin Moncrieff, who in the 1860s improved on existing designs and used a counterweight system capable of raising a gun over a parapet, the recoil then allowing it to disappear back into an under cover bunker to be reloaded and aimed again for the next shot.
New Zealand, a British Colony since 1840, was made responsible for its own land defences in the 1870s. Soon after, Britain was gearing up for a war with Russia, over the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1885. New Zealand, fearing that Russia might take a pop at them due to their association with Britain and their poor defences, decided they had best do something about protecting themselves. Construction of Fort Taiaroa began, with six gun batteries being installed between 1885 and 1905, including the Armstrong Disappearing Gun, manufactured by WG Armstrong and Co at Elswick, Newcastle upon Tyne in 1886.
However, nobody had told the Russians that they were expected to invade, and they never turned up.
The Royal Navy did some trials in New Zealand and discovered that the chances of a warship hitting a small shore installation were virtually nil. Soon after, it became apparent that although the guns were effective against ships, they were vulnerable to air strikes. More powerful, long range guns were coming into service, but the disappearing carriages were not capable of an elevation of greater than 20 degrees - not much use for mounting the new guns on. Expensive to make and maintain, incompatible with newer technology and with their protective benefits under serious doubt (why have a big complicated arrangement to protect a target that nobody can hit anyway?), the disappearing gun was declared obsolete by the British Army in 1912.
The one at Taiaroa Head was restored in the 70s and 80s and is now kept in immaculate condition by the Otago Peninsula Trust. It is still capable of being fired, although its proximity to a protected albatross breeding colony means that it is unlikely that it will be going bang that often now.
We headed off into Dunedin to get some shopping and suchlike dealt with, and, it being a much nicer day, we were able to rescind our initial "Ugh, grey and miserable - not staying here" opinions, and found ourselves quite taken with the place. Dunedin is an old name for Edinburgh, and the city does feel quite Scottish - grey, rainy, liberal scattering of pubs and pie shops, that sort of thing. Although that much is indeed true, in all seriousness there is somehow quite a Scots feels to the place, which, to be honest, there's probably not much point trying to explain. Go to Edinburgh, go to Dunedin, you'll feel that somehow there's a link greater than their both having 'Edin' in their names.
We explored for a bit, mooching and window shopping, before fetching the computer from the van and installing ourselves in a café with WiFi, staying till they closed to sort out a few admin tasks - banking, writing, e-mail, etc. A productive afternoon, but not a particularly interesting one.
We became a little concerned when we left the car park - the oil light pinged on with no apparent trauma. Not wanting really to blow up the engine, we eventually found a garage...and the light went out. After we'd bought the oil. We'd been parked on a very steep incline, which was probably all the problem had been. Ho-hum.
We found ourselves a layby quite a way out of town, installed ourselves for the night, then drove into town again, booked into a campsite - it's nice to have showers and a real kitchen once in a while - then walked into town. En route, we passed a family, the latish-teenage son of which was looking sullen and playing the harmonica as they walked down the street. It was one of the most overt displays of "I'm a teenager, I'm quirky, no-one understands me, I'm quirky, I'm QUIRKY, dammit, why is no-one being interested in how damned unusual I am?" either of us had ever seen. His family were doing an excellent job of ignoring him and hoping he'd grow up.
Jacob feels qualified to comment in such a judgmental and superior fashion as he was once - there are those of you who will remember - just such a pain-in-the-arse teenager. So, hopefully Mr. Harmonica Bloke will also turn into a similarly fine, well-rounded individual of enormous benefit to humanity...
Today's agenda contained two items. One: get Kirsty's hair cut, two: visit the Speight's Brewery.
The three month 'Monstrous Experiment' of not washing our hair and hoping it would become self-cleansing had never quite been recovered from, so the split ends needed removing. Although after the event her hair was still easily long enough to tie back, plait, wind up into a bun, swish around attractively in the wind, be described as 'long', etc, etc, Kirsty still felt like she'd been shorn down to the bone. Jacob left his alone. He gets a rather silly Samson complex sometimes, and has to build up to having a trim.
The Speight's brewery tour started well: the chap behind the counter asked us if we were entitled to any sort of discount, which, we shrugged, we probably weren't. "Are you backpackers?" We had encountered the idea of the 'Backpacker's Card' discount scheme before, but weren't cardholders ourselves. That didn't matter to him - as long as we were of no fixed abode, we had cheap entry into the brewery.
We then had one of those 'funny old world' moments: the Uruguayan hitcher we took from Wanaka to Queenstown was in the same tour group as us. Funny old world.
Speight's was started in 1876 by James Speight and his two friends Charles Greenslade and William Dawson. Despite the fact that he was neither a brewer nor a majority shareholder, his was the name attached to the company: he was the salesman, so when he went off to sell the beer, the publicans got the impression they were dealing directly with the main man. You bought your ale from Speight, so it should be called Speight's Ale. How Dawson and Greenslade felt about this is not well recorded.
The brewery was sited directly above a well, to ensure a constant source of pure clean water for the brewing process. They still draw their water from it, and there is still a tap outside the front door from which anyone can help themselves to as much water as they like. The brewery has the water checked and certified for purity and cleanliness every so often and it always passes. Despite this, and despite the public tap outside being perfectly permissible by law - with no need for a "May Be Unsafe For Human Consumption" sign - they are still legally obliged to 'purify' the water before they can brew with it.
The New Zealand Health and Safety regulations stipulate that all water used in food and drink manufacture must be subjected to an approved treatment process before use, so Speight's spend thousands of dollars chlorinating the water, then further thousands to dechlorinate it again because they don't much fancy making ale that tastes of bleach. The rules happen to be worded in such a way that the water being 'pure' is never mentioned, it only matters that it has been 'purified'.
Obviously, a demand for something pure to be purified is both silly and, if you think about it, logically impossible...but those who wield the rubber stamps are, it seems, utterly unmovable. It wouldn't take long with a bottle of Tipp-Ex and a biro to insert something like "...or which, in its untreated state, has been deemed fit for human consumption..." into the wording of the statute, but then common sense and legislature have never been the happiest of bedfellows.
Speight's are quite proud of being the only 'gravity brewery' left in New Zealand. This means the ingredients start on the top floor and the brewing process takes place through a series of trapdoors, chutes and taps in the bottom of huge brewing cauldrons, so everything descends naturally through the building. There's probably no proof that it makes anything taste any better, but combined with the use of big old gleaming copper brew kettles and knurled brass fittings, it somehow feels like a good thing.
Now, you know how certain brand names don't have much clout in the Brave New World of the foodie? For example, when we visited microbreweries in Vermont, they were very scathing when mentioning names such as 'Budweiser' or 'Coors Lite'. Well, in New Zealand, Speight's has something of that name for itself. For years, it was one of the two or three brews you could routinely find anywhere. Nowadays, as more traditional names (although often owned by the big companies) are resurfacing with ranges of interesting beers and more independent microbreweries are gaining ground, Speight's are making more of an effort to produce a decent collection of ales.
Having toured around, listening to the rote-learned, rapid-fire commentary from Jason the guide, it was time for a tasting. We enjoyed most of their stuff (well, the apricot flavoured seasonally brewed Summer Ale wasn't great), but as usual, the rich dark porter type brew won. It was served far too cold for that style of beer to be honest, and Jason agreed, but said that most of the New Zealand drinking public (and, indeed, most of the tour guests) don't understand the concept of drinking any beer that isn't icy cold.
Our time up, we left the bar and collected our stuff from the lockers...whereupon Jacob noticed that the side door between the toilet corridor and the now empty tasting room hadn't been locked. He dived in and pinched an untouched glass of stout which had been sitting on the bar for long enough to achieve a more sensible temperature. Much better.
Next door in the Speight's Alehouse (a chain of pubs who serve beer 'fresh' - delivered by tanker, not in kegs, with a very short shelf life but better flavour because of the lack of preservatives), we had another couple of jars and a disappointing bite to eat. When fruit and veg shopping, we had noticed some big knobbly tubers called Kumara next to the spuds, and often seen them mentioned alongside the chips on menus, in the form of Kumara Fries. We gave them a bash. We were quite glad they came with sweet chilli sauce and mayonnaise, as eating them unadorned would have taken a bit more effort than we were prepared to muster. Kind of soggy, kind of sweet and a little more fibrous than you would want potatoes to be, they were neither parsnippy enough for parsnips nor spuddy enough to be spuds. We weren't overly struck.
We picked up a case of Speight's on the way back to the campsite, then set about using their facilities. We made a curry and baked some bread, and took it in turns to have showers and stir the pot. Kirsty attempted to dye her hair bright red, but the results were a little disappointing. Well, very disappointing to be honest. In the summer her hair does tend to redden quite a bit, and really, the dye achieved no more than a day or two sitting in the sun would have done. Maybe find a hairstylist to do it properly. We shall see.
The curry and bread had the desired effects - filled us up, tasted really good, and, as two of the most jealousy inducing food smells there are, drew lots of envious comments from our fellow campers. We played pool for a while in the communal games/dining room, before getting booted out when everything closed down at ten thirty. In the morning, we flooded the kitchen with that other great aroma of culinary envy: we made bacon butties.
It was time to head onwards from Dunedin, but not before visiting a little local curiosity in an otherwise unremarkable suburb. Baldwin Street is not the steepest street in the world, but because the Guinness Book Of Records lists it as such, they've got a little plaque there saying that it is. There was a typo in the records, claiming the gradient to be 1:1.266 (38° or 79%), which would be impossible to walk up. Corrections were made and Guinness still lists it as being the steepest street, but at 35%. Canton Avenue in Pittsburgh is 37%, which beats Baldwin, and is probably the steepest there is. Guinness are, to date, unmoving on the issue.
Nevertheless, Baldwin Street is one of the steepest streets there is, and it's thoroughly ridiculous that anybody ever built houses on it (city plans for the distant colonies were often drawn up in offices in London by people who had no idea of the terrain). It's surfaced in concrete, as tar would melt and run down the hill on warm days. Equally ridiculous is the annual Gutbuster Race, in which people run up and down it. Honestly, there are sections of it where you'd be forgiven for crawling, so running (in either direction) takes a special breed of nutter.
For the last six years, there has been an annual competition in which Jaffa Cakes are rolled down the street. Participants sponsor individual cakes; prizes are awarded to the winner and the funds raised (from the sponsorship of over 10,000 Jaffa Cakes) go to charity. Nice.
We elected not to take Lucy up it.
