2.50pm - Debbie Does Dunedin

  Dunedin, South Island, New Zealand
Monday, December 1, 2008

Monday 1 December, 2.50pm, my studio

Chess not quite as popular in the rain

Happy December, everybody! Time is flying by a little too fast for my liking. Although I am of course excited about seeing people again, I am desperate to make the most of being here. Too soon, for example, has my visit to Dunedin come to an end. And today it has absolutely pissed it down, so I am feeling a bit grumpy, as my plans for this afternoon - to do another of the nearby walking tracks - have gone entirely awry. If I wanted to walk for an hour to reach the sea while being rained on and blown at by gale force breezes, I would have gone to Blackpool.

Yesterday was again very cloudy, though the rain managed to contain itself until later on at night when I had already gotten home. Whilst making my way up to Taiaroa Head, the northernmost point on the peninsula, I stopped by

Cute fur seal

Pilots Beach, where young fur seals can be seen coming ashore to play. I watched them for a while, then started to head back to the car, only to discover a massive seal sat right next to the path. Either he snuck ashore while I wasn't looking, or he was there when I arrived and I just was not paying attention! He seemed very placid, but as I stood and watched him he managed to move quite quickly a couple of times, so I'm glad I didn't get too close.

Royal Albatrosses and Stewart Island Shags

Left Pilots beach and went up to the Royal Albatross Centre, where I admired many albatrosses. They were all sitting very patiently on their eggs, ignoring the rather bracing wind blowing round them. One did a funny little waddly walk up to the top of the hill we were on to start flying - they have to be at just the right place as their wings are so big (3m from tip to tip, can you believe that? They're enormous!) so they will apparently walk all the way round the cliff face until they find the right spot. Bless.

Yellow Eyed Penguins

After the albatrosses, I went to Penguin Place, the nearby reserve where Yellow Eyed Penguins come to breed. The penguins I saw at the Antarctic Centre were Little Blues, which are very common, and can be seen all over NZ and southern Australia, but Yellow Eyed Penguins are the rarest in the world, there are as few as 3,000 left in the wild. Very sad. They are very noisy, which I found rather amusing, and possibly an answer as to why they keep getting chomped by seals, sea lions, orcas etc. Apparently something occurred a week or two back in the reserve where they had a very hot day, and for some reason 75% of the

We had to wait for them to get off the path

chicks that had been born died, so a lot of the breeding pairs were wandering around without any chicks to feed (they usually have either one or two). The guide got a bit choked up while she was telling us; I think they take their work quite seriously. Anyway, we wandered around from hide to hide, checking out the penguins - it was really cool, I enjoyed it a lot more than the albatrosses, who were very impressive in the sky but quite far away. The penguins were much closer.

I debated whether to go back to Pilots Beach and watch the penguins coming home after a long day of fishing, but in the end thought that driving back down the coastal road in the dark would not be much fun, especially since there are no street lights. The penguins don't return until dusk, so by the very nature of the thing it would be dark by the time I set off, and since I had just seen a bunch of Yellow Eyed Penguins, I thought it rather silly to risk life and limb just to see a few more. Instead, I headed back, and glugged some more wine.

Today I was planning on going to the Cadbury Factory, but I didn't realise it was right in Dunedin city centre (of all places!), so parking became a bit of a nightmare. By the time I'd found somewhere to abandon little Demi, I missed my time slot, and it turns out that they're a bit funny about tour timing round Willy Wonka's way. Maybe they were just really busy today, I don't know, but I figured it wasn't worth arguing and left them to it. (I'll just have to go to the one in the UK some time instead!)

Instead, I strapped on my elbow patches and headed for Dunedin Art Gallery, which was right next to the car park, as luck would have it. They had a fantastic exhibition by an artist called Michele Beevors, called Debbie Does Disney. It was essentially this twisted look at the way Disney is ostensibly all about innocence and childhood, when it is of course a massive corporation, and involves a lot of cynical marketing tools. My favourites had to be "Love, American Style", which featured John Smith standing holding a rifle with an ear of corn poking out of the end while a bleeding Pocahontas lies dying at his feet; "How The West Was Won", where the (Arabic) Princess Jasmine stands on a globe holding aloft the severed head of George W. Bush; and "Seven Seas Suicide", where a mermaid who is obviously supposed to be Ariel (though my picky nature immediately noticed her shell bikini was the wrong colour, hehe) holds a cleaver in one hand and a tiny Nemoesque clownfish in the other, looking horrified at the fact that her tail has been severed into three parts.

Dunedin Art Gallery says NO to indoor photos!

I would be showing you pictures of these awesome sculptures rather than describing them, except, oh yes - the Dunedin Art Gallery doesn't allow you to take bloody pictures. Not even with the flash off! They take your fricking bag off you before you go in to make sure you don't smuggle a camera in!! Bastards. Fair enough if we are dealing with a ton of old oil paintings or something, but come on, they could just say no flash photography, it'd be fine - it's not like any of these rooms are in low level lighting or anything, no no no. Hypocritical bullshit designed to make you buy pics in the gift shop is what it is - it's the exact kind of thing the Disney exhibit is satirising. The ironing is delicious.

Anyway, if you google image Michele Beevors, you'll see a couple of the Debbie Does Disney pics, the Jasmine one and "Psycho Killer & Friends", which was Mickey, Goofy and Pluto but painted in camouflage gear and holding guns. The Belle one was called "Someday My Prince Will Come", I believe, and featured Belle in her ballgown, wiping coke residue from her nose and pulling one breast out of her dress. Far more disturbing than anything else was the idea that Belle has breasts, let me tell you.

There was also this fantastic exhibition of this woman called Rita Angus, who I'd never seen before, but was absolutely excellent. She experimented with a lot of different styles of painting and drawing, and a lot of different materials, though chiefly watercolours and oils, but all her work was really fascinating. She died of cancer in the 70s, but it's the 100 year anniversary of her birth, apparently, so they've done an exhibition of over 130 of her pieces. Really excellent. Should you find yourself in downtown Dunedin, I highly recommend it.

Anyway, as I say, was planning on heading out to Hooper's Beach this afternoon (if only to make Lorna wee when I took a picture of the signs) but it is not outdoor weather. So I had a spot of lunch and people watched for a bit, then came home. I need to get my stuff together, I am off to Queenstown tomorrow and want to leave reasonably early. I've not really been getting enough sleep, so I think I will have an early night tonight - fortunately anything that won't go into my backpack can fit into the bags under my eyes instead. So that's nice.