A Saturday Outing

We woke up today to a beautiful sunny day, forecast to be in the high fifies. (Remember, this is the equivalent of late February). So we decided to take a short outing and try a new road out of Dunedin. But first we wanted to go to the farmer's market, held every Saturday morning beside the train station. We've gone every other Saturday since we've been here. We buy a terrific venison pepperoni, tofu from a Chinese lady (the best tofu in town according to the Japanese husband of one of my co-workers), and lots of local vegetables like cabbage, onions, and leeks for great prices. The apples at the farmer's market are really cheap - NZ$5 for 5 kilos, which is about US$.32 a pound. They are the best apples we've ever eaten, which is hard for someone from Washington to say. (In fact, we have never eaten so many apples in our lives. We go through the 5 kilos, which is 11 pounds, in a little more than a week.) We parked across the street from the train station, close to the building in the first picture, the old prison which was decommissioned as a prison just this week. I wonder what they will do with it. It was built to imitate the old Scotland Yard in London. The second building is the law courts.

That's the train station in the background of the photo below, and one of our favorite apple vendors.

Today was the first time I've ever seen ostrich eggs. The sign says they're for painting, not for eating. Just to give an idea of how big they are, in the bags to the left of the eggs are unshelled walnuts.

These are duck eggs, and the eggs on the top layer have a bluish tint.

After the market, we took off on our drive, heading north and east out of Dunedin on a back road.

At one point the road was high above the harbor. This view below looks south and east, across the harbor to the end of the Peninsula at the mouth of the harbor. The colony of giant albatross that Dave visited a few weeks ago is at the end of the Peninsula.

The photo below is taken from the same position, looking straight south across the Harbor to the Peninsula. The ocean is behind the Peninsula. It's amazing how different the color of water can be at the same moment, depending on the angle of the sun.

The Waitati River is about 15 miles north of Dunedin, and there's a very little town there called Waitati. From the town, we headed towards the ocean, a few miles away. The first photo is near the mouth of the Waitati River and the second photo shows a beach right at the mouth of the river.

Around Dunedin

Here are some of the sights around Dunedin that we like. Dunedin has two downtown Presbyterian churches (the first two photos) which most Presbyterians believe is too many for a town this size. The third picture is the old law courts with the train station in the background, and the fourth and fifth pictures are the train station, one of the most beautiful buildings in town. The last two pictures are from the botanical gardens. Just so you don't think Dunedin is a uniformly beautiful city, I have to add that it has some unbelievably ugly buildings as well. My office at the university is in a building that looks like a prison.

Some beaches

Spring is coming to the southern part of New Zealand. The Saturday newspaper told us the best evidence of this fact is that the fiordland crested penguins have begun to come ashore to nest on the west coast. I've never measured the arrival of spring by this indicator before. Perhaps inspired by this harbinger of spring, we decided to do some exploring to the north of Dunedin along the coast. Our first stop was Palmerston, a town about 45 minutes north, where we found a delightful statue of Zealandia, a traditional personification of New Zealand. From a distance, we wondered what kind of odd torch she was holding in her hand. The fifth photo has fur seals in it. Dave says there are five seals on the rocks, but I can only see three.

Port Chalmers

This morning Dave took a drive along the south side of the harbor to Port Chalmers, a small town with an amazing church, a big container shipping facility, and lots of views of water and boats. The first photo is the least photogenic of the all the ones I'm posting today, but he took it especially for the blog. The small gray building is a public toilet. Dave is very enthusiastic about the public toilets in New Zealand, which are sprinkled here and there around Dunedin, and are also easily found in small towns. They are free and clean, with a sink and hand drier, and sometimes with piped in Muzak. They have sliding doors that are activated by pushing a button. The doors make me nervous. I'm afraid I'll get inside behind the closed door and something will happen and the door will never again open.