A Quick Kiwi Conclusion (Dunedin and Christchurch)
After my trip down southwards, I began to realize that I didn’t have all that much time in New Zealand. Indeed, as I woke up in Te Anau, I noticed that I actually had only four days left before I had to depart the country via Christchurch.
Fortunately I woke well rested, thanks to the wonderful place I was staying, Rosie’s Backpacker Homestay. Though they don’t have a website, I so enjoyed my stay there that I’m going to include their address and phone number: 23 Tom Plato Drive, Te Anau, New Zealand; +03 249 8341
Rosie and her family were super friendly and even put up with me sitting in the main bedroom typing my previous weblog entry until 23:00 (I actually hadn’t realized that anyone slept in the room where the computer was.) Furthermore, Rosie was quite happy to drive me out to a good hitching spot the following morning for my (300km) trip to Dunedin.
Once again, I won’t trouble you with details of a full day’s hitchhiking (and it was a pretty full day: starting at 10:00 and ending at 6:00) but will just mention a couple of high (or low) lights: Taking forever to get the 20km between the tiny town of Mossburn and the little town of Lumsden (most traffic in these towns turns towards Queenstown rather than going through as I was,) getting a ride at 13:30 on a Sunday afternoon with three very drunk young kiwis and one (what appeared to be) sober driver and being fed beer in the back seat (I later inquired and found out that, yes, it is legal to have open alcohol containers in the car,) and finally going most of the actual distance with a family of five who re-arranged their kids in the back of the mini-van in order to provide room for me and my pack.
All of this brought me to Dunedin, the second largest city on the South Island. Dunedin was, for a period during the Otago gold rush, one of the richest cities in the British Empire, and it shows in its architecture. There are dozens of fine old buildings being used for all manner of pedestrian purposes today.
In addition to its former wealth, Dunedin also boasts (perhaps unsurprisingly) a strong Scots heritage. This is ever-present in the names of streets, pubs and restaurants, not to mention many of the city’s tourist attractions (not to mention the statue of Robbie Burns in front of City Hall.)
Since I arrived in Dunedin late, I just wrote a few postcards before retiring.
The next day would be, to many people, a dream day. My first stop was the Speight’s Brewery. At this brewery (though not in others where the majority of Speight’s is actually produced) they use open vat fermentation, this time in kauri wood vessels. Also interesting is the fact that this is one of only four breweries in the world that operates on a gravity system. All ingredients are brought up to the top of the brewery and then allowed to fall from one floor to the next as the brewing process progresses, meaning that no pumps are required to run the plant.
The tour itself was pleasant enough, with small exhibits about the history of beer in general and Speight’s in particular, as well as their well known advertising campaigns. I was also intrigued to learn that in New Zealand popular brands of beer are often distributed in tankers. Trucks are filled with beer and then deliver it to pubs that have large, refillable beer tanks on the premises.
The tour seemed like a scaled-down version of the Guinness tour in Dublin. The tasting session after the tour was a pleasant surprise. I’d tried the flagship product, Speight’s Gold Medal Ale before, and wasn’t particularly impressed by it. Fortunately, pretty much all of the other beers produced here were quite enjoyable and certainly got the afternoon (it was about 13:00 by now) off to a nice start.
My next stop was the McDuff’s brewery, the smallest of the three in the city. While I couldn’t get a tour (they have only two employees and both were very busy at the time) I did sit and chat with the owner for a few minutes, and was invited to try their products. I took a couple of bottles with me and wandered down to the University of Otago campus to enjoy them, the weather and a late lunch.
The University of Otago reminds me quite a bit of McGill. It has many nice old buildings, as well as a few nice modern ones, along with one or two of the un-avoidable slightly less nice 1960s vintage concrete blocks. Also like McGill, the campus is very compact and located right near the centre of town. The university, along with the other tertiary educational institutions in Dunedin play a major role in the city’s life, with over 20 000 of its 120 000 residents being students of one sort or another.
After my layabout in the sun on campus, I headed to my first non-brewery industrial facility of the day: The Cadbury’s plant. Dunedin is the location of Cadbury’s second largest factory in the world, and products manufactured here are exported to Australia, the Middle East, and even to Canada.
My visit started with some interpretive displays about the history of chocolate and a film about the factory, including health and safety precautions for guests. These included wearing not only hair, but also beard covers. The tour itself passed through a variety of areas in the factory, but as we’d caught them between shifts, activity was at a lower than normal level.
The highlight of the tour was supposed to have been a 6 or 7m high waterfall of liquid chocolate at the end of the tour (1000kg of chocolate pour out of the top into re-melting vat below) but for me it was something else. As we were standing around waiting to pass through some keyed doors, a squat lady factory worker walked by. As she passed, our tour-guide, Janet said “And here we have an Oopma Loompa.” I couldn’t stop laughing for a good five minutes. I’m sure she must make the comment regularly, but she said it in such a casual fashion that it sounded as though it had just occurred to her as she saw this particular plant employee.
After the Cadbury’s tour, I walked up to the final of my brewery stops, the Emerson’s Brewery. They were even busier than McDuff’s, being in the middle of a bottling run, but one of the pair working took a few minutes off to chat with me about their products and to grab me a small glass of their oatmeal stout, fresh out of the bright beer tank. Just from a taste of this one beer, I knew their products were something special.
At the recommendation of the brewery staff, I headed up to the north end of the city to The Inch Bar in order to try the rest of their lineup. On the way I walked through a park where three groups of guys were playing touch rugby. I joined in with one of them for an hour or so, displaying my bare competence and delaying my trip to the bar, but working up a bit of a thirst.
When I finally arrived at The Inch Bar, I found it to be a tiny pub full of character, just the sort I like. While there I tried the Emerson’s 1812 IPA (very good, and only available bottle-conditioned) their Old 95 Old English Ale (also quite good) and one more of the Oatmeal Stout. I was disappointed that I couldn’t try their other six products, but I knew I had to be up early the next morning.
The reason I had to be up early was the 400km of hitchhiking that awaited me to get up to Christchurch.
Starting out at 09:40 or so, I had no end of difficulty just getting out of the city of Dunedin. Finally I managed, and it only took about 7.5 hours to make it all the way up to Christchurch. Highlights of this trip were the two young fishermen on their three week shore stint (after six weeks on the boat) who took me the last 140km or so, as well as Favien, a Chilean dentist and Neuropsychologist. He’s now working primarily as a dentist in order to better support his family of six who immigrated to New Zealand with him, but his explanation of how his neuropsychological work used fractal geometry to find patterns unique to individuals in (at first glance random) problem solving strategies (such as those used in the game Battleship.)
After this very entertaining trip, I arrived in the centre of Christchurch, from where, as arranged, I phoned Deb Rees (you may remember her and her husband Owen from my Heaphy Track entry.) Not only did she and her son Ashley come downtown to pick me up, they had a wonderful dinner waiting for me, along with a wonderfully comfortable bed in (gasp!) my own room.
After a nice evening of catching up on events since we parted ways, looking through Owen’s photos of his climbing trip to Nepal, as well as introducing me to their sons (Ashley, who I’d met in the car, and Sean, a student-civil engineer,) everyone eventually headed off to bed.
The following morning, I woke nice and late to an almost empty house. After doing a bit of laundry, and writing and watching The Rugby Channel as it dried, I was ready to head into town to explore Christchurch.
My first stop after hopping off the bus was the centre of the city, Cathedral Square. Christ Church Cathedral (yes, Christ Church, not Christchurch) is a lovely neo-gothic style building with a single 64m tall spire on the left side of the entrance. The square that surrounds it is a focal point for the city in general and its food vendors, buskers and tourists in particular.
Perhaps the most entertaining of these street performers (I won’t call him a busker, since he wasn’t looking for contributions as far as I could tell) was a well known fellow called The Wizard.
Dressed in a peaked wizard’s cap and a flowing black robe, complete with a flowing beard and long grey locks, this fellow really was the embodiment of Merlin or Zosimus. While he may have resembled a wizard, his “act” (if it’s fair to call it that) was closer to Plato. Each day he sets up in the square and while walking around, standing on or resting against his trusty ladder he expounds his views on all manner of subjects to anyone who will listen.
Far from being the local nonsensical raver, The Wizard delivers his “lectures” in a clear, firm voice and while some of his facts may be slightly off, and he occasionally makes fallacious leaps in logic, he always sounds as though he’s being entirely reasonable. Nor is he beholden to any (obvious) doctrine or belief system. His opinions on various subjects generally do seem to be entirely his own.
His subject for the session I listened to (or at least listened to forty minutes or so of) was the changes in and failures of relationships between parents and children, and between men and women over the past five thousand years.
After listening to my fill of The Wizard’s lecture, I exited the square down Worcester Street. Without realizing it, I wandered off the pedestrian mall (it’s not entirely pedestrian. The tourist tram also operates there) and into the Arts Centre. The Arts Centre is a spectacularly cool place. Formerly the site of the University of Canterbury, the neo-gothic buildings now house a wide variety of arts and crafts stores, artisans’ workshops, theatres and cafes.
The original use of the buildings makes them almost entirely unsuited for retail use, but this is part of its charm. You can wander through narrow, meandering corridors, both within the buildings and out in the courtyards and passageways that separate them, never really knowing what sort of establishment you’ll find around the next corner. The Arts Centre is sort of an “Anti-Shopping Mall.”
After exploring the inside of many of the buildings, I headed out into one of the courtyards. Here I paused to admire the continuation of the arts-themed space, in this case exemplified by the sculpture/pool at ground level and the aerial sculpture above. This courtyard was such a pleasant space on such a lovely sunny day that I felt I had no choice but to lay down on the grass and read for a bit.
Before I got through TOO many pages, I figured I ought to carry on my exploration of the city, given that I did only have one day there.
My further wanderings took me towards the huge botanical gardens, but before I could find my way into them, I was sucked in by the Canterbury Museum at their entrance. The museum as a whole was interesting enough, though it couldn’t compete with Te Papa in Wellington in the size or presentation departments. Like Te Papa, its four floors contain a variety of New Zealand-centred exhibits. However the place where it really shines is in its Antarctic Department. Christchurch has been a (if not THE) major staging ground for Antarctic exploration and research for close to a hundred years now. Thus it makes sense that its museum has what I imagine must be the greatest collection of artefacts from that region.
There is a reasonable sized section dealing with the natural history of the continent, but what I found most intriguing was the collection of artefacts from its much briefer human history. These range from medals, letters and diaries belonging to such Antarctic luminaries as Robert Scott, Ernest Shackleton and Roald Amunsden, on up to multi-ton vehicles and even buildings that have been used in the Antarctic. Perhaps the most interesting of all of these was a mostly wooden motorized sled used by Roald Amunsden’s team in 1912 when they became the first to reach the pole.
After my exploration of the museum, I headed back out for a very brief wander around the botanical gardens. My visit here was cut short by the need to return to Owen and Deb’s in time to head out to their indoor netball match, which I had kindly been invited to.
We were the first to arrive at the indoor sporting facility (similar to a scaled down version of The Hangar for those from Toronto) where the game was to be played. I was fascinated to learn that not only were indoor netball and soccer played here, but indoor cricket as well. Played in a netted-in area little larger than a basketball court, play continues off the walls and even ceiling of the court. The speed and hardness of the ball, and the crampedness of the court lead to a very high injury rate amongst its players.
But enough of cricket. I was there to watch netball. Owen and Deb’s team-mates (collectively named Footloose) arrived, decked out in their club jerseys, warm-up jackets, kit bags et cetera et cetera et cetera. They almost looked as though they played professionally. I have to admit that despite my first hand knowledge of how experience can triumph over youthful vigour, it was only the professional looking uniforms that suggested Footloose would come out on top against their considerably younger opponents.
Thankfully Owen and a couple of his team-mates were not playing that evening, and so could explain the finer points of this (seemingly) complicated game as it progressed. For those unfamiliar with it, indoor netball is vaguely similar to basketball, except there is no backboard, no shot clock, no dribbling, no out of bounds and players can’t make any attempt to directly strip the ball from opponents. This is further complicated by the fact that each of the seven players’ movement is restricted to certain sections of the court.
I’m pleased to say that my initial assessment of the matchup (which had been kept to myself, of course) proved to be drastically wrong. The 30 minute match ended with the wily veterans on top by a comfortable 34-19 margin.
After the match the team headed out to their sponsor pub (the source of most of their professional-looking kit) for a few drinks, dinner and a celebration of Owen’s birthday (not to mention their victory.) Once again, I was kindly invited along, and treated to a lovely supper and my last (several) New Zealand beers. Many thanks to the whole team for having me along for the evening!
Its fortunate that I had such a full day (not to mention a huge meal and a few beers) because it allowed me to drift off to sleep almost instantly after arriving back at Owen and Deb’s. This was necessary in order to wake up in time for my 06:55 flight to Auckland the next morning. (Due to poor planning on my part, I’d had to buy an additional plane ticket to take me from Christchurch to Auckland where I picked up an entirely separate flight on my RTW ticket to Sydney.)
Fortunately I woke up with no trouble, and got packed, only pausing to say farewell to Deb on the way out the door. The wonderful woman got out of bed at 05:30 simply to see me off. Then again, perhaps it was just that Owen had also woken up at that time in order to drive me to the airport, which was thankfully not far from their place.
Waking up that early did have its benefits though: The sunrise at the airport, along with the sun shining on the Marlborough Sounds (near Picton, where I’d arrived in the South Island) were both beautiful farewells to this beautiful country.
So ends my time in New Zealand. Before finally taking my leave, I’ll just include a few more general reminiscences that haven’t made it into the weblog yet:
-The multitude conversations with Kiwis about similarities between Canada and New Zealand, and especially about our respective relationships with the US and Australia.
-Constantly adding and removing layers of clothing. Sometimes six or more times over the course of an hour.
-Sitting at the side of the road waiting for a ride and admonishing myself for thinking ill of those who didn’t stop without a discernable reason. As I said to myself at the time, “you’ve no idea where they’re going, who they are, or anything of the sort. And furthermore, all of these people driving by are, if not individually, then at least collectively your benefactors.”
-The feeling that I picked the perfect time to visit New Zealand. The weather wasn’t too bad, and the country wasn’t yet overrun by tourists/travellers. If I wanted to enjoy my solitude, it was easy, if I wanted to meet people and be social, that was easy too.
-The smell of coal smoke on cold nights all over the south island.
I may add to this list if anything more occurs to me, but for now I bid farewell to both you and to New Zealand.
Many thanks to all in the country, both fellow travellers and especially native kiwis who made my time there as wonderful as it was. And an extra special thanks to Deb and Owen and their sons for being yet another in the ever-growing list of superb hosts that I’ve been privileged to stay with in New Zealand and around the world.
Tags: New Zealand
Llew