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My New Zealand trip inspired 28 pages of journal and hundreds of photos. I had to select among the photos. The last shall be first on this blogsite, so to follow my progress day by day go to number 1 in the New Zealand theme. Each text page is followed by a photo page. This is the last page. Thank you to those who have persisted and read it all. It is a personal journal that shows my foibles and follies and, I hope, some of my strengths too. It is personal because each of my good friends deserves to know me as I really am. If you are a new reader you might also be a friend one day. I hope one day I will learn how to overcome the problem of those terrible multi-spammers who forced me to take the ability to comment off of this blog site, then maybe we can get to know each other. If you have just come upon this journal it might be best to go to Number 1, a few pages back, to begin. Go to the bottom of each page and click on ‘previous’ until you get there.

Hugh

(continued)

A pleasurable moment came when I saw a young person who looked Japanese and asked if she had seen the prints. She had missed them because they were on the walls of a stairway. I led her to them and she corrected my pronunciation of Hiroshige but was thrilled with them.

At the end of the day I put my phone on the charger and tried to download my photos to the drive. For some mysterious reason it would not take them from the card this time, though usually it’s automatic. I just changed the memory card in the camera. I’ve got three and I would soon be home to put them directly in the computer.

I was in plenty of time for the evening penguin walk but no one else came to join the party so it was cancelled. As you have probably guessed, my idea of a great holiday is a progression from restaurant to restaurant so I went in search of food. I didn’t have to walk too far to find a Chinese restaurant with Chinese customers. The meal was pretty good, beginning with mushroom soup and then duck and vegetable. The duck was done in the approved Chinese way and cut in dangerously spiky chunks that the diner has to put in his mouth and manoeuvre carefully to strip the meat off, but it was slightly charred. I indulged myself with a fried ice cream too.

When I got back Suki was there and we chatted a while and looked at each others photos of the day. She said, as she had before, that in Korea a friendship between two people of such different ages is impossible. I wondered what her conservative family would have thought if they knew we were sharing a bed! (A bunk, actually) To my American friends: A bunk is not what you might think, to me it is just a kind of two or three storey bed).

Nouveau tiles, Dunedin Station

Day Twenty-one

My bus left at midday but I was still wary of problems so I rose early to have lots of time to walk there. Suki gave me instant noodles, a common travel meal in China and, obviously, Korea. We said goodbye and I set off. It’s a pity I didn’t take a picture of Suki. She has my e-mail.

I travelled north through another lovely part of New Zealand. Is there any part that is not photogenic? This bus was different from the others I travelled on in that the passengers were nearly all locals, going home. They were dropped off at various towns along the way. We had a meal stop at Omaru and I snapped a couple of quick shots of one of several piles of railway scrap that lay along the tracks by the beach. For some reason I love photographing scrap. Maybe it takes me back to my childhood when I used to roam through a disused gasworks.

Just after six I reached Christchurch and hauled my gear to Charlie B’s. They are very well organized in helping people to get their transport and booked me a taxi and a wake up call so I could not miss my plane. Elaine had been unable to get an all female dorm there and as she is quite wary of mixed dorms moved to another place not far away, so I stowed my stuff and went there. The duty staff member must have thought I looked harmless (unfortunately he’s right) so he told me Elaine’s dorm number and let me go and find her. I knocked and she opened up and went in to get some things and we went for our dinner. Just across the road was the arcade with the Korean and Japanese restaurants so we went there. We had Kimchi Bing Bang Bong or whatever it’s called. She enjoyed it but perhaps not so much as I did. With Suki I struck it lucky and she loved the food but with Elaine our food didn’t quite hit the mark.

Elaine is good company and quite a tease. She is always up for a verbal spar and great to be with. After dinner I left her at her hostel. We promised to meet again in Brisbane and I went back to mine. My mood was high and I checked the internet, had a shower and did various things before settling down to sleep at midnight.

Me at Cathedral Square, Christchurch, on the last night

Well, at least my $15.00 parka matches the sculpture.

Day twenty-two

At 3.30a.m. I was gently wakened by a staff member and rose to get my things together as quietly as possible and leave. No one was at the counter to return my key deposit so I just left the key and lost my money and went to my waiting taxi and another interesting synchronicity. The taxi driver was an Indian man. He told me this is only his part-time job and that he owns two Indian restaurants, one in Christchurch and one in Queenstown.

I told him about my Indian meal experiences in New Zealand. He had a wide knowledge of the Indian restaurants of New Zealand and agreed I would have eaten well in Dunedin and Queenstown and knew of the one in Greymouth too and told me its story. I think he advised the man who opened it and told me that at first the best Indian chef in New Zealand was hired and it built up a great reputation quickly. In his opinion the owner got greedy, dismissed the original chef and hired a lesser cook, skimped on ingredients and the quality dropped. This fits with Jules’s comment that it started off well then ‘went off’. Elaine, I hope you read this.

At the airport I wanted to rid myself of my remaining New Zealand cash and after a coffee and snack I went to the Duty free shop. Though it usually takes me several months to finish it I always have a bottle of whisky in my cupboard and I found a lowland single malt that attracted me by the description on the bottle. It cost about what I had left so I went to the counter to buy it. The price was what I had left, to the cent!

As a Scot I had to teach the sales assistant how to say the name of the whisky - Can you say Auchentoshan?

My plane trip was uneventful and I used my parka/pillow to sleep for about two of the three and a half hours. Passage through customs and bag collection was uneventful and then I took the train back to Wynnum.

There are more photos on my iStockphoto portfolio. They are for sale there very cheaply but you can just look. The link is at the top of the column on the right of this page.

Roof section, Dunedin railway station

Central Tower

Roof with weathercock

Frieze

Roof detail

Tower

A symbol of the end of my railway trip

Hugh and ‘The Chalice’

Will my grail quest never end?

My New Zealand trip inspired 28 pages of journal and hundreds of photos. I had to select among the photos. The last shall be first on this blogsite, so to follow my progress day by day go to number 1 in the New Zealand theme.. Each text page is followed by a photo page.

(continued)   A few minutes later an Asian woman was shown into room. I felt revived after sitting for a little while so I tagged along on the tour of the hostel. I’m glad I did. The computer room was particularly hard to find. It was great to discover Betty’s has free internet, though slow and with three computers.

Kim Song Su is from Korea and we hit it off immediately. I chose to call her Suki because her English name is Sue and I didn’t want confusion. Soon we were leaving to explore the town together. At the neo-gothic Anglican Cathedral we were given a personal tour by a lovely gentleman who was likely a verger or canon or one of those other obscure Anglican words. Then we walked around the main street and had coffee in Starbucks, talking so long that when we left it was almost time for dinner. Suki wanted something spicy and the first possibility we saw was Indian. This time the meal was delicious and I introduced her to some of my favourite dishes and to Lhassi, the beautiful yoghurt drink that is at its best when flavoured with the delicate original rose flavour. She loved the food and I thought ruefully of my unsatisfactory eating experience with Elaine in Greymouth.

Betty’s was offering an evening trip to the penguin colony and we both wanted to go on it but our conversation was so absorbing that we lost track of time and missed it. Eventually the staff brought us the bill to give us the hint they wanted to close up.

‘Rabbie Burns’, Robert Burns, Scotland’s favourite poet in Dunedin

When we returned to Betty’s I wrote up yesterday’s journal and went to bed. Suki showered and went to the lounge perhaps to chat and meet people. A funny thing happened at the Indian. She received a call on her cell phone from her mother in Korea. Her mother was very impressed she was having dinner with a Westerner and became somewhat reconciled to her being in New Zealand. She thought her daughter must be very good at English and said she was proud of her. Suki’s English is pretty good.

Day twenty

I slept late but saw Suki in the kitchen. She planned to go to the Brewery and Chocolate factory tours and I hoped to find a wildlife tour. We left independently. On the way out I talked to the guy who takes the night excursion parties and told him I’d be there that evening.

Breakfast was Subway again and I saw Suki walking past as I ate. Just along the road I spotted her sitting outside the iSite in the octagon area. I was going there to look for my tour so I snuck up behind and pulled her hair. Ok! So there’s still a little boy in me. She enjoyed the surprise anyway. The weather was sunny so she had decided to leave the indoor tours till next day and explore more by walking. I didn’t offer to go with her because I knew I would slow her down. In the iSite I decided the wildlife tours were too expensive for me and walked out and down the hill where I discovered something worth looking at.

First I saw the Court building and took some pictures then turned my focus on the elegant but large building across the way. I wondered if it was the University but to my surprise it was the railway station. I read that it was built in the Flemish style. Inside, in the entrance Hall, I was thrilled that the interior is Art Nouveau, perhaps my very favourite decorative style. I have many lovely photos of it in all its detail. It reminded me of the entrance hall of the Argyle Motor Works in my native Vale of Leven.

Courthouse Dunedin with the grand Railway Station in the distance

In the centre of Dunedin is the Octagon, basically a grassy central park with eight streets forming the sides of the octagon. A statue of Robert Burns, stands in pride of place there. He was a poet, beloved of Scots all over the world, a drunk with a bad reputation and a lover of life and nature. This, more than anything, shows Dunedin’s Scottish origins. Here’s a Burns website: http://www.robertburns.org

I went to the Octagon to see the Art Gallery but lunched first at one of its cafés. Sadly, the two menu items I desired most were unavailable, Steak and Guiness Pie and Lamb’s Fry. Imagine, a shortage of  lamb’s liver in New Zealand! I remember my late great-aunt Ruby, a real old Aussie, introducing me to Lamb’s Fry. She made it superbly and it is a dish that is either badly cooked or tender and tasty.

After a very plain lunch I went to the Art Gallery and really enjoyed it. The highlights for me were a Japanese collection and a collection of European Paintings. The Japanese woodblock prints came from a private collection and were mainly works by the masters Hiroshige and Hokusai along with others. There was a collection that contained a good selection of European art from Renaissance to last century. Numerous great names were included. Once again a group of colonial works left me unimpressed. Let me not forget a nice little collection of works centred on the achievements of Audubon. (to be continued)

There are more photos on my iStockphoto portfolio. They are for sale there very cheaply but you can just look. The link is at the top of the column on the right of this page.

Dunedin Court building

The Flemish style railway station

Entrance hall, Dunedin Railway Station

Ticket windows

Art Nouveau door handle

Cornices

A stained train

Ceiling

Floor

My New Zealand trip inspired 28 pages of journal and hundreds of photos. I had to select among the photos. The last shall be first on this blogsite, so to follow my progress day by day go to number 1 in the New Zealand theme.. Each text page is followed by a photo page.

(continued)   Near the mouth, almost at the Tasman Sea, is a beach where Maori used to go for Pounamu. Some of it is in the form of large boulders and the Maori had no tools to break it into transportable sizes. They lit fires under them and heated them for days then rolled them into the cold water where they split into many pieces.

There they are!

My biggest thrill came near the underwater observatory. We did not stop there but I spotted dolphins in the distance and quipped to other passengers that New Agers think dolphins are telepathic so if we put our hands on our foreheads and concentrated hard we might be able to attract them. Of course I didn’t put my hands on my forehead but I tried and the school began to come nearer. Suddenly one large bottle-nosed dolphin burst from the group and started swimming straight towards the spot on the deck I was standing on. It kept on coming and I could hardly believe it. In the end it dived under the ship below me and swam away on the other side. I got a good shot of it. It is not every day at Milford that people even see the dolphins.

Playful creatures, eh?

What can I say about the scenery at Milford Sound? It is best if you just look at the photos. This is one of the world’s most superb places.

That smile’s for me, I’m sure it is.

On the trip back to Te Anau we stopped at more good spots. Les gave an interesting account of the building of the Homer Tunnel, 1270 metres through solid rock. Later he took us on a walk through a forest that some of Tolkien’s characters would have felt at home in. It is beech forest, the dominant forest on the East Coast of New Zealand. Moss covers everything with a thick coating of rich green. Even what looked like fairly fresh log falls were covered in thick moss. Les told us how to identify the two types of beech there, silver and red. They are nothofagus species, like the Antarctic Beeches of South-east Queensland.

I arrived back in Te Anau very happy and about 350 photos richer. I thought that even if I had 50 good ones it would make me contented (for a moment or two at least). I did a first inspection and deleted 50. Then I went on a food recce and found a Chinese restaurant full of Chinese tourists. Taking that as a good sign I went in and had my chicken and corn soup followed by beef and doufu (tofu) in a clay pot.

Day nineteen

It was a frosty 1 degree C morning as I made my way to the bus stop, wearing my heavier rain jacket. The driver of the intercity bus to Dunedin was a good friendly fellow who did his best to warm the bus up quickly. On this trip there was no interaction between the passengers, the landscape was less spectacular and the commentary less inspired. It was a good time to catch up on sleep.

Why is it that all of these early morning bus services proceed as if all passengers have had breakfast before embarking? Shops in New Zealand don’t normally open before eight and not everyone is able to have food at their hostel. The first meal stop is usually three hours or more after departure.

The amusing part of the trip for me was the Presidential Highway. Please excuse my cynicism but the driver said the road was named that because Bill Clinton travelled along it years ago and I thought of it as low-grade opportunism. I was unable to confirm the story of the Presidential visit on the internet but did find that the road traverses the area between the towns of Clinton and Gore, which were named long before those two American politicians took office.

I arrived in Dunedin at a quarter to one and I asked a helpful young man at the bus depot where I could go to find a hostel, not too far away and not at the top of a steep hill. He checked his computer and circled three locations on a map for me. He told me his favourite and said it was only fifteen minutes away. Maybe on his bicycle! Half an hour later, still carrying my pack and dragging my case and day pack, I spotted Betty’s Backpackers in a side street and made a beeline for the door. It wasn’t the one he recommended

Most of the hostels have some workers on working holiday visas and Betty’s was no exception. A beautiful German girl took my money and showed me to my dorm. I wanted to rest my bones so refused a tour of the facilities and sat down on my bed. (to be continued)