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| Olvesten House |
This was
our most southerly stop and the weather
didn’t disappoint us with a show reminiscent of Edinburgh after which the city is named
- torrential rain all day and 14C. Actually it was quite atmospheric but
curtailed our photograph opportunities.
The coastline on the way in looked beautiful with rolling hills coming
right down to the coast and just room of a narrow coast road.
The first
Scottish settlers arrived at Dunedin (an old
Gaelic name for Edinburgh)
in 1848 and it flourished in the goldrush of 1861 (which petered out by
1881) -
the town’s Octagon was modelled on the one in Edinburgh –
it does have a lot of impressive public buildings and private houses and
a superb railway station. We only had
about 4 hours here and in view of the weather we opted for two tours.
The first
was to Olvesten House, a magnificent Edwardian mansion built in 1906 for a
wealthy family and willed to the town complete with all its beautiful antique
contents. A lot of the fittings and
furnishings had been shipped over from England, including the stained glass
windows, staircase and tiles, and it
contained lots of innovative features such as heated towel rails, internal
telephones and some of the earliest electric fires – which I’m sure were needed
in the winter.
Following
that we had a tour of Speight’s Brewery – the most popular beer in New Zealand –
finishing with a half-hour tasting where we had free access to the pumps for
their six brews – they certainly tasted good, but maybe that’s because they
hadn’t had to travel anywhere or we didn’t have to pay for them?
As we
sailed away, still in torrential rain, we kept a hopeful lookout for the
Albatrosses which have their nest sites in the area but we didn’t see any
though some passengers said they did.
We are now
(Friday) experience the tumultuous Tasman sea on the way to Melbourne – apparently it is normally rough
as the Roaring 40s winds blow round the world at this latitude.
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