We departed Dunedin camp site around 10.00, having completed all necessary activities, both personally and associated with the van. It was a disappointing start to the day again, as we were surrounded by low cloud and fine misty rain. It was just as well we went to the Otago peninsula yesterday, as we can’t see it today for the low misty cloud. We headed off through Dunedin city centre, with the intention of taking a look at the botanical gardens, even though it was pretty miserable. Unfortunately, we were unable to find the entrance and before we knew it, we were heading out of town on highway 1, so the botanical gardens was deleted from today’s itinerary.
Our destination was the town of Oamaru, an old seaport that was used to ferry sheep and immigrants out and into New Zealand respectively. On the way North we passed through a number of small communities, which comprised of no more than a handful of properties, until we reached the relative civilisation of Palmerston. This is another relic of the gold rush days and the buildings reflect it’s heritage. . We had parked the van and decided to take a look round as we needed some rolls for lunch. Compared to some of the places we visited on the West coast, this place did not appear as one of the more wealthy parts of NZ. Perhaps we are wrong, but even the food in the supermarket seemed cheaper here. In many towns here, as in the UK, there are pawnbroker shops called Cash Converters. As we walked down Tiverton St, there was a similar place, but called Trash Converters. The contents of this establishment made the bric-a-brac stall at Shirley Church fete look like Harrods in Knightsbridge. To say that it was full of junk would be an understatement.
Not long after Palmerston the road starts to hug the coastline and it was very much like driving up highway 1 in California, between LA and San Francisco., Just a short while later we arrived at our main photo opportunity of the day, Moeraki Boulders. These are spherical boulders that appear in just one place and are partially submerged in the beach. On the outside they appear as smooth spherical objects, but inside they have honeycomb centres, which can be seen in some of the broken ones.
The geologists have some theory that they started to form around 60 Million years ago around a core of carbonated lime crystals, but personally I believe that these are some form of alien creature waiting to take over the world, as soon as global warming reaches the right temperature. Either way, they are fascinating items and it would be great to understand where they really come from.
From the boulders at Moeraki we move away from the coast until we reach our destination of Oameru and the Top 10 campsite. We were one of the few vans on the site, but within an hour, it was starting to fill up rapidly. We had some lunch, then decided to walk into town as the drizzle had left off, but it was still very grey and miserable. We headed for the historic part of town, which has old warehouses, some of which have been refurbished into trendy eating establishments and others into craft workshops, selling some interesting items. The main town was full of beautiful, old, white Victorian limestone buildings for which this area is famous, but there was still not an air of wealth around.
Oamaru is also famous for its colonies of Yellow Eyed and Little Blue penguins, the latter of which come ashore around dusk and you can go to a visitor centre, sit in a grandstand and watch them come ashore. Unfortunately, you are not allowed to take cameras or video recorders into the grandstand, presumably the flashing of the cameras would disturb the birds. As we have seen both types of penguin, we decided to pass on the dusk entertainment, especially as you were not allowed cameras on the beach.
The shops close at 1.00pm out here and at 4.00pm when we were walking round after visiting the trendy emporiums in the heritage part of town, the main high St was like a ghost town. Apart from a few cars driving up and down, there was hardly another person in sight. I’m not sure what they do out here on a Saturday afternoon. Perhaps there was a good match on the telly this afternoon or the sheep need attending to!
After a good wander around, we returned to the campsite to prepare for the evening feast of steak on the barbeque, with sweetcorn and jacket spuds. Cheap meal tonight.
As we have made up a few days by moving on when the weather has been somewhat inclement and the fact that we did the Banks peninsula at the start of the holiday rather than the end, we are now going to visit Mt Cook and Arthurs Pass, before returning to Christchurch.
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