Port Chalmers and flax

Saturday at noon it was sunny but a storm was supposed to come in that evening, so Dave and I decided to take a little outing before the weather fell apart. We drove to Port Chalmers, which is about halfway down the Otago Harbour from Dunedin. It takes only about 15 minutes to drive there. We went up to a lookout point. From there, you can see the Port Chalmers is the container port for Dunedin. A lot of wood products -- wood chips and logs -- are shipped from there as well.

The lookout point has a sculpture garden nearby. This next photo shows the sculpture I like best.

The next photo shows the view across the harbour. Also notice the wide leafed plants behind and in front of Dave. They're New Zealand flax.

New Zealand flax is not related to the plant called "flax" in the Northern Hemisphere. This flax is native to New Zealand and was used by Maori for all kinds of things, such as clothing, baskets, rope, fishing nets, bird snares, mats, and cooking baskets. Maori recognized 60 varieties and had flax nurseries where they grew the various varieties. The scupture garden had quite a few varieties of flax, which I photographed. The first one has the remains of flower stalks from summer.

Across the harbor from Port Chalmers is the odd hill called the Harbour Cone. It looks so much like something from Lord of the Rings. I always expect a hobbit to come walking by when I see it.

From the sculpture garden, we could see Mount Cargill, the highest point around Dunedin. I've taken pictures from the top of Mount Cargill (see the post from March 23, 2008, some of the later pictures in the post). It's the hill with the tower on it in the far distance in the photo below.

Here's a close up of Mount Cargill, and the last photo is a closeup of the hills to the left of Mount Cargill. They're such typical South Island hills, with fields delineated by hedges.