Roaring Forties

I've been meaning to write a blog post about the Roaring Forties. I'm sitting at my desk listening to the raging wind and the rain beating against my window, and decided it was time.

The Roaring Forties is the name given to the band of mostly sea that lies between forty and fifty degrees south. If you look at the map below, you'll see that the tip of South America, the South Island of New Zealand, and Tasmania are the only large bits of land in that band. Sailors coined the name because of the winds that roar around that latitude in the Southern Ocean. (We wouldn't want to forget the Furious Fifties and the Shreiking Sixties, but mercifully, we don't live there. New Zealand owns a few islands between us and the Antarctic, and the weather there sounds like it is amazing.)

Because there is so little land mass in the Southern Ocean, the winds are not impeded by very much. They swirl and shift around Antarctica, giving the Southern Ocean some of the roughest seas on earth. In recent months I've come to realize how significant these winds are for our weather on the east coast of New Zealand's South Island.

Our daily life is dominated by shifts in the wind, which bring radically different weather. In the past week we've had daily highs in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. (Remember it's summer here.) On December 20, the day before the summer solstice, we had amazingly strong cold winds, rain and hail. The next day I asked a kiwi if he had heard how strong the winds were the day before, and he said he hadn't paid much attention, because they seems pretty average to him. On Christmas Day, it was calm and almost 90 degrees., the warmest Christmas anyone can remember.

The winds seem to contribute to the abundance of micro climates, which depend on hills that block the wind in various places. And the weather can change in an hour or two quite dramatically. You never know how to dress. "Layers," all long-term Dunedinites say.

an evening outing to Brighton beach

A couple of weeks before Christmas, we decided to go for a walk at Brighton Beach one night after dinner. It stays light until 10 p.m. in December here, so there was plenty of daylight left. Brighton Beach is just southwest of Dunedin. My favorite route to get there involves going up over a big hill, and I love that route because the views are so lovely. One of the things I continue to enjoy about New Zealand is the textures and contours of the hills.

Cabbage trees in bloom

New Zealand has an amazing array of native trees that are unique to this country. One of the more unusual native trees is the cabbage tree, and they're everywhere. At first they looked to me like yucca plants on the end of sticks. They're in bloom right now, and I took a picture of one of them in our neighbor's yard.

Southern Hemisphere Christmas

Last week the ad flyer for my favorite housewares store said, "Get Ready for Christmas!" And the stuff on that page was picnic tables, coolers, and picnic supplies. It made me smile. Lots of Southern Hemisphere December food is red and green: strawberries, watermelon, tomatoes, lettuce. No need to make red and green Christmas cookies, all you have to do is buy some fruit and vegetables.

Last Tasmania post

On one of our four days in Tasmania, we took a day trip north and west of Hobart. We stopped in Mount Field National Park, about 90 minutes from Hobart, then went further west towards the mountains into eucalyptus forests. We stopped in numerous places to poke around. Dave and Mike took a couple of short hikes into the forest. Here's a selection of photos from the day.

Battery Point houses

Our cottage in Hobart was in a very old neighborhood called Battery Point, named after a gun battery that was installed on a bluff there in 1818. To put that date in perspective, Dunedin was founded in 1848. Lots of houses and buildings on Battery Point are lovely and very old. The first photo shows the main shopping street in the neighborhood, with Mount Wellington in the background, where Mike rode his bike. The second photo is an Anglican Church that dates from the mid 1800s. We attended church there on the Sunday November 8, and there were box pews like we've seen in very old churches in New England. The rest of the photos are gorgeous old houses.

The last three photos in this post are all of the same house.

Mike's amazing bicycle trip

See that mountain in the previous photograph with the white tower on top? That's Mount Wellington, 4100 feet, right behind Hobart. Mike decided to ride his rented bicycle up there. Mike lives in Denmark, where the highest point in the whole country is 590 feet. He bikes all the time at home but never gets to go up mountains on his bike. Dave drove up and met Mike at the top because they both figured that riding down would go through a set of brakes on the bicycle. So the bike was in the back of the car for the ride down, not up.

The next photo gives a sense of where the prison at Port Arthur is. On the most distant piece of land, Port Aurthur would be to the right, off the photo.

Hobart harbor and Salamanca

On our first night in Tasmania, we went to a seafood restaurant on the harbor in downtown Hobart. We loved the look of the harbor.

The place in Hobart where we spent the most time is called Salamanca. It's right on the edge of the Battery Point neighborhood, where we were staying. Salamanca has a long line of beautifully restored sandstone warehouses that date from the 1830s whaling era when this area was the hub of Hobart's trade and commerce. The buildings fell into disrepair in the mid-twentieth century and were restored in the 1970s. Those umbrellas you see in the next photo are outdoor restaurants, and the whole line of buildings is shops and restaurants. Back behind this row of buildings is a plaza lined with more shops and restaurants. (The mountain with the communication tower in the background of the first photo below is Mount Wellington, where Mike rode his bike.)

On Saturdays, the parking lot you could see in the previous photo is filled with a market that has food and lots of crafts for sale. I bought several Christmas presents there.

our cottage and us

In Hobart, which is the biggest city in Tasmania, we stayed in a fantastic historic neighborhood called Battery Point in a cottage behind an old hotel. I thought I took a picture of the hotel itself, which was charming, but if I did, I can't find it. I did get a picture of the sign advertising our cottage. Note the date - 1834 - on the sign for the hotel.

The view from the cottage was terrific.

Down to the right is where the big harbor opens into the Tasman Sea, the ocean between Tasmania and New Zealand. Hobart, by the way, is the same latitude as Christchurch in New Zealand, which is five hours north of Dunedin.

One day we were there, we saw a cruise ship that had docked in town. Later in the day, back in our cottage, we heard the big blast of the ship's horn, and a bit later we saw the cruise ship leaving the harbor and heading towards open ocean. What made this particularly interesting to us is the fact that the ship was most likely bound toward Dunedin. We've learned that the typical cruise ship pattern goes like this: Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, across the Tasman Sea, then Milford Sound (on the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand), around the south tip of the South Island, Dunedin, then up the east coast of New Zealand stopping in Christchurch, Picton, Wellington and a few places on the North Island. My aunt and uncle took that route, as did some friends from Seattle, and in both cases we met their ship in Port Chalmers, down the harbor from Dunedin, and took them around Dunedin for the day. Anyone interested in a cruise? Come visit us that way!

The hotel served breakfast upstairs, and the deck outside the dining room had great views for taking photos. Since some of our blog viewers have been asking for more photos of us, here you go.