Richard's New Zealand Odyssey 2007

Southland, Dunedin & Canterbury
7 November 2007


Dunedin

After a short drive up the coast we came to Dunedin.  The city has an interesting and architecturally diverse collection of buildings.  Many that have survived from Dunedin's heyday following the 1860's gold rush, when the city was the country's commercial centre, are within walking distance of the centre.  After driving around the centre for about 15 minutes we finally found a parking spot.  Well we decided to park in the parking lot of a strip mall.  We headed to the towns Octagon, but passed through the Queen's Garden on the way.  Not surprisingly, there was a statue of Queen Victoria, as well as the war memorial.
Dunedin
Dunedin
Dunedin
Dunedin

Just outside the central octagon is the First Church.  Many of Dunedin's finest Victorian and Scottish Edwardian-style buildings are attributed to architect Robert Lawson (1833-1902).  The Scottish-born Lawson had trained as an architect in his home country before migrating to Melbourne, where he found little work, and instead made a living form gold-mining and journalism.  He took up his profession again in 1861 and the following year won a competition for the design of First Church in Dunedin.  Lawson moved to Dunedin and so began a successful association with the city.  His list of credits include the Municipal Chambers, Otago Boys High School, and Knox Church in George, which was consecrated in 1876.  However, it was his initial Dunedin Design, First Church, which many consider to be his masterpiece.
Dunedin Dunedin
Dunedin
Dunedin Dunedin
Dunedin Dunedin

Looking down from the hill that First Church is perched on you see the Otago Early Settlers Museum Which houses collections of early means of transport, including the country's first steam engines.
Dunedin Dunedin
Dunedin Dunedin

Below are the Municipal Chambers.  Built in 1880 at a time when Dunedin was revelling in the fortune brought by the gold rush.  The building was topped be a 47 m high tower.  The chambers are an excellent example of the use of Oamaru stone.  It has undergone considerable restoration and refurbishment both inside and out.  It is home to the Council Chambers, where city councillors meet, and features a number of reception and meeting rooms.
Dunedin Dunedin
Dunedin Dunedin
Dunedin
This is the Dunedin Prison, which mimics many aspects of London's New Scotland Yard, although on a smaller scale.  Completed in 1895 it also served as the Dunedin Police Station until a new building was commissioned in the mid-1990s.

Dunedin
Beside the Municipal Chambers and overlooking the Octagon is the Anglican St Paul's Cathedral.  Construction in 1919, the cathedral stands high above the Octagon on an elevated site, with a broad staircase leading to its doors.  It owes its prominent position in a predominantly Presbyterian settlement to the generosity of Johnny Jones, an early whaler and trader.  the cathedral, which replace a smaller church built on the site in 1863, has many fine architectural details, including the vaulted stone ceiling.
Dunedin Dunedin
Dunedin Dunedin
Dunedin Dunedin
Here is a picture of the only vaulted stone ceiling in New Zealand.
Unfortunately it was the 1970s by the time the Anglican community realized they would not have the money to finish building the church.  The organ and rear of the church were smacked on in the modern style of the 1970s and really rune the look of the church.
Dunedin Dunedin

Another gem is the Dunedin Train Station.  It is one of the finest stone structures in the country.  The station has a 37 m high square tower, three clock faces and a covered carriageway.  It is one of the best examples of railway architecture in the southern hemisphere.  although not large by international standard, the station's proportions lend it an air of grandeur.  Opened in 1906, the Flemish Renaissance style building was designed by New Zealand Railways architect George Troup, whose detailing on the outside of the building earned him the nickname "Gingerbread George."
Dunedin Dunedin
Two imposing stained glass windows on the mezzanine level show an approaching steam engine, lights blazing, and facing each other across the ticket hall.
Complete with wrought-iron balustrades and mosaic tiled steps, a staircase sweeps up from the ticket hall to the mezzanine level.
Dunedin Dunedin
A frieze of cherubs and foliage from the Royal Doulton factory in England encircles the ticket hall below the wrought-iron balcony.  The mosaic floor is made up of more than 725,000 Royal Doulton porcelain squares forming images of steam engines, rolling stock and the New Zealand Railways logo.

Dunedin Dunedin

Leaving Dunedin and heading north along the coast there are many sweeping bays, and a few deer farms.
Dunedin
Dunedin
About 80 km north of Dunedin on the coast lies the Moeraki Boulders Scenic Reserve.  The Moeraki Boulders lie scattered along the shore between Moeraki and Hampden on the east coast of New Zealand's South Island.  They are remarkable for their size and roundness and there is nothing quite like them anywhere else in New Zealand.  The creation of these septarian concretions began about 60 million years ago when muddy sediment slowly accumulated on the sea floor.  Shell fragments and plant debris were incorporated into the layers of sediment during deposition.
Dunedin
Dunedin
As the mudstone accumulated on the ancient sea floor, it was continuously mixed by burrowing animals: fish, marine worms, mollusks and sea urchins.  This destroyed any original layering in the sediment.  Within the wet sediment the cementing mineral calcite gradually crystallized around organic nuclei to form spherical nodules.  Geologists calculate that this took about 120,000 years for a small concretion (less than 0.5 metres across) and about four million years for a large one (over two metres across).  Below Right is a Moeraki Boulder with the distinctive surface pattern which forms when erosion exposes he internal network of veins.  This pattern is typical of septarian concretions and has given rise to the names "turtle backs" or "turtle stones."
Dunedin
Dunedin
The outside surface of the developing concretions then became hard and brittle, and the inside material began to dehydrate by chemical reactions, causing shrinkage cracks to propagate outwards from the core to the rim.  Subsequently the cracks became filled with calcite crystals which grew in tow stages.  Tiny crystals of brown calcite grew first, followed by larger crystals of yellow calcite.  Looking closely at these pictures you can see the two different colours of calcite.
Dunedin Dunedin
By the time the yellow calcite began to form, the region had been uplifted on the edge of the new New Zealand landmass.  This period of mountain building is known as the Kaikoura Orogeny.  It began in the Miocene period and is continuing today.  Finally, in the last few million years, erosion of this landmass exposed the mudstone beds containing the Moeraki Boulders as seen below left.  the weathering effects of rain, surf and sun have worn away the outside of many of the boulders, revealing the network of calcite-filled veins.  These fragments of boulders lay littering the beach.
Dunedin Dunedin

Oamaru is the main town of north Otago and service centre for the rich agricultural hinterland.  It is a pretty town with wide, tree lined streets, well-kept gardens, galleries, beaches, colonies of rare penguins, and the best preserve collection of historic public and commercial buildings in New Zealand.  The buildings were fashioned in the 1880s from Oamaru stone, a local cream-coloured limestone which is easily cur, carved and moulded.  They present a fascinating picture of a prosperous period when grain stores and warehouses were designed to be as grand as the public and commercial buildings which surrounded them.

Below is the Criterion Hotel.  Built in 1877, this hotel went dry in 1906 during prohibition.  Now restored, it serves patrons in a Victorian pub atmosphere.

Dunedin
Dunedin
Dunedin
Dunedin
Dunedin
Dunedin

Below is New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Warehouse.  This three-story Victorian warehouse, built in 1882 for New Zealand's largest stock and station agency, was designed to hold up to 100,000 sacks of grain.


The Waitaki District council building was Originally Oamaru's second post office, built in 1883.  The building's 28 m clock tower was added in 1903.
Dunedin Dunedin


St. Luke's Anglican Church (1865 - 1913) contains fine interior wood carvings.
Dunedin Dunedin
Dunedin Dunedin
Dunedin
Just outside of Oamaru is this Yellow Eyed Penguin Colony.  All the penguins on the beach were still out at sea feeding.  If we had stuck around for another hour, we were told, this beach would have been teaming with penguins.
Dunedin
Dunedin
Dunedin Dunedin
On these wind eroded rocks there are some examples of Maori rock art.  Most of the remaining pictures depict scenes of European arrival in New Zealand, but some also depict pre-arrival myths and events.
Dunedin
Dunedin
Dunedin Dunedin
Dunedin Dunedin
The Waitaki Power Station, built 1928-34 is the oldest of the eight hydro-electric stations on the Waitaki River and its headwaters.  It was the second State-built power station in the South island.  The fist was at Lake Coleridge in Canterbury (begun in 1911 and first operated 1914).  In preparation for construction, a railway line was built from the railhead at Kurow and five kilometres of the main Kurow-Omarama highway were rebuilt to allow for the formation of the lake.  The station was the last to be built without modern mechanical equipment--some 560,000 cubic metres of material were excavated almost entirely by pick and shovel.  It was completed in 1934 and the first two generating units (15 megawatts each) commissioned the following year.  The station then supplied almost half the South Island's electricity needs.  Two more units were added between 1940 and 1941, and in 1949 a fifth unit was added, bringing the station to its originally planned 75 megawatts.  In 1954, following completion of the Tekapo and Pukaki water-storage projects, the station was extended by the addition of two more units, bringing it to its present capacity of 105 megawatts.
Dunedin Dunedin

Before heading to the campground in Twizel, we drove to the south end of Lake Pukaki in order to get some pictures of Mount Cook (New Zealand's highest peak) while the skys were clear.

The peacock greeted us at the gate to the campground in Twizel.  Twizel was build in 1969 as a contruction town for the Upper Waitaki hydro-electric development scheme.  Once the hydro scheme was completed, the local people successfully fought to retain the town, and began to expoit its proximity to excelent fishing and boating lakes, and to Mount Cook. 
Dunedin Dunedin