Dunedin (Done)
Trip Start
Nov 12, 2007
1
25
40
Trip End
Aug 01, 2008
Dunedin,
New Zealand
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Dunedin was settled by the Scottish (hence the edin in Dunedin)and it is easy to see the influence. The city is like a smaller version of Edinburgh including the hills and on a cold wet day we felt like we were in Scotland. There are a lot of impressive Victorian stone buildings giving the city a brooding dour feel.
The station is particularly impressive and even includes a stained glass window showing a steam train. Dunedin claims the world's steepest street which we climbed but after a morning's exploration we felt we had "done" all we wanted to.
We headed to the coast to Tunnel Beach. This is a great but inaccessible beach so some time in the 1800's a rich landowner had a small tunnel carved down to the beach through the rock. The beach is impressive even in the rain with sculptured limestone cliffs as intricate as those on the Great Ocean Road if not on the same scale. No flies here they would have drowned in the rain.
We headed North from Dunedin the following day stopping first at the Moeraki Boulders. These are a strange set of spherical boulders on a beach some whole some broken up. An interesting sight even in the rain. They are caused by something happening to lime crystals. The detail passed me by. We arrived in Oamaru at lunchtime a small town also with plenty of Victorian buildings and allegedly penguins. We did brave the beach but as the penguins were not there to greet us we did not hang around.
We were relieved the following morning to see the sun shining again and we headed west stopping at the Elephant Rocks (scene of Aslan's camp in the Narnia film). Bizarrely in the middle of nowhere we then came across a sign all edging that the strange shape rock next to it was part of a fossilised whale preserved in the hillside. The excellent drive on up the valley passed several lakes mainly used for hydro power and we also stopped at the bizarre Clay Cliffs another eroded moon like rock formation. I cannot make up my mind if NZ is one big geography lesson or a film set.
