For the Benefit of Mr Kite

Dunedin is cold and it is raining most of the time. It is like living in a perpetual cloud. Even when it is not raining properly, there is still a thin veil of precipition in the air. The wind is also cold. As soon as we arrived, it started raining.

 

Apart from the weather, Dunedin is a nice town. It isvery commercial - kind of like Melbourne. There are lots of little shops everywhere. In the centre of the town there are at least 5 antique shops. Interestingly, one of the main old buildings now houses a strip club.

 

We have done a lot of walking around the city, and seen some really good buildings. Dunedin has better graffiti and stencil artists than Brisbane. We took a picture of a really big stencil so you can see what I mean. One of my favourite pieces of graffiti is one of a crudely drawn octopus saying - I like food with acronyms. I think its funny.

 

Last night (Day one) we went on the Speight's Brewery tour. It was really good. I had previously eaten far too much (a result of not having lunch or snacks) and was in a little discomfort until about halfway through. The building was really good. A great example of 1940's industrial architecture. Unfortunately, went we left the hostel we didn't think we would be going on the tour so we didn't have the camera with us.

 

This morning (day two) was an adventure. We were up a 3:30 NZ time - 1:30 back home to see the penguins. Dunedin was really in the middle of a cloud at this hour of the morning. Luckily, we didn't have to wait outside the hostel for too long before the tour operator arrvied. We drove out to Sandfly Bay (there were no sandflies this morning) and hiked down to the beach. Along the beach we came across three huge sea lions lounging on the beach. We gave them a wide berth as they are very big and have teeth. We then climbed up to the penguin hide and waited. As soon as we got there we spotted penguins. They are cute. We saw about 5 make their way down the beach which is good considering how cold and wet it was that morning. There was also a big sea lion on the beach near where the penguins come down, so that was slowing them down a bit. We also saw fur seals on the rocks and in the water as well as two oyster catchers and their chicks. It was good - I really enjoyed seeing the animals in the their environment. We walked back to the dune which we came down, bypassing the sea lions again. We came across three penguins making their way back up the beach which is the wrong way for that time of the morning, they spotted us and ran for their lives, it was funny. We saw one more penguin before we got to the cliff we had to climb.

 

Now I don't use the term cliff lightly. Went we came down to the beach in the dark it didn't seem so back, but now that it was light, the sand dune was quite omnious. Nethertheless, we solidered up it and there were some really nice views. We also had our first close encounter with New Zealand sheep on the way back up the cliff. They had tails and were scared of us - funny sheep.

 

Back at the hostel, we had a nap and then headed out for lunch. We walked around for a bit and then went to the Otago museum. It was good but the displays repeated themselves a bit. There were stuffed birds there.

 

More later, internet time running out