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April 04, 2005

Day 174: Oamaru

We drove to the small town of Oamaru, 109 km north of Dunedin. It was basically just a stop to break the trip to Mt Cook, which is almost on the other side of the island.

Oamaru, like Dunedin, has some neogothic buildings as well, these mainly old factory buildings. They are now transformed into second hand bookshops or art & crafts shops.

As it was a Wednesday afternoon, the place was quiet, not to say dead, so we wandered around a bit, then walked back to the campsite. On our way, we saw Humpty Dumpty sit on a wall. For those of you who don't know the rhyme, this is it:

'Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again'

Or Keiron's slightly naughtier version:
'Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall
Eating black bananas
Guess where he put them?
Down the king's pyamas (sp?)'.

So of course, we had to take a photo of him. Back at the campsite, I yelled at the very slow computer while Keiron read his book. In the evening we had spag bol (spaghetti bolognaise) and tea and biscuits until (quoth Keiron) 'a Bible-bashing, clog-wearing, pancake-eating Hollander' came ruin our evening by preaching doom and destruction if we didn't follow the word of God (ie the Bible).

As with most of these people, they have an answer for everything and an ear for nothing and I was very close to telling him that I'm hardly going to believe the ramblings of four women-hating guys who all had a different story to tell, in a work that is so ambiguous that you could probably prove Michael Jackson is the actual father of God if you misinterpreted the words badly enough.

But that would mean more slick ripostes from him and frankly, we had had enough. So we went to bed, worrying for a bit if he might come after us (after all, we are unmarried and living in sin) with a meat cleaver. We left him to convert the others, a Swiss couple that (quoth Keiron) 'had already hoisted the neutral flag' and a young guy who probably thought this was one of the 'deep meaningful conversations' you are meant to have when travelling the world.

It was extremely cold and we snuggled up in all things thermal we could find.

Posted by Nathalie on April 4, 2005 08:24 AM
Category: New Zealand/Aotearoa
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