Dunedin overview and highlights

 We arrived in Dunedin three weeks ago. The day before yesterday -- election day in the U.S. -- was beautiful and very still. I wasn't feeling well so I couldn't write that morning. Dave and I hopped in the car and drove to the top of Mount Cargill, 2230 feet or 680 metres. We can see it from our living room window.

The drive up is fairly well maintained because of the communication tower at the top. Halfway up we paused to take a photo of the first panoramic view of our city. 

The house we're renting on Maori Hill is on the far right side of the photo, in that patch of houses that looks white in the photo. In the distance is the Pacific Ocean. The body of water that looks like a lake is actually the Otago Harbour, which extends about ten miles to the left where it enters the ocean.

From the top, the view of the city looks slightly different, but you can still see the ocean and the harbor, and our current house is just to the right of edge of the photo.

The house where we lived for ten years is behind the hill in the foreground in Northeast Valley. Turning a bit to the left, I took the next photo which shows Otago Harbour on its long snaky path to the sea. 

Downtown Dunedin is to the right and the ocean is to the left. The piece of land between Otago Harbour and the ocean is call the Otago Peninsula, which has some gorgeous hikes and beautiful ocean beaches on the other side. For the next photo, I turned a bit to the left and took a wide angled shot, then shot zoomed in on the harbour cone.

To the left of the harbour cone is Hooper's Inlet, a salt water marshy area with great bird watching. To the right of the harbour cone, you can see the waves crashing onto Allen's Beach. For the next photo, I looked a bit further to the left again. 

The land in the middle of the Otago Harbour is actually two islands, originally part of the volcano that created the harbour. The harbour itself is the sunken center of either a series of volcanoes or a series of volcano vents. I haven't exactly figured it out, but Mount Cargill is a volcanic outcropping from the volcano(es) that shaped this area. Turning a little more to the left, the outlet to the ocean is hidden in fog.

I zoomed in on the end of the Otago Peninsula, partly because the fog was so beautiful, and partly because of what happens at the very end of the peninsula.

That little lump of land sticking up above the fog is actually attached to the peninsula. The opening to the sea is to the left of that lump hidden in the ground fog. That little lump is Taiaroa Head, home of the only albatross nesting site that's not on a remote island. The albatrosses come and go, feeding their babies. They are the most majestic birds I've ever seen. I fell completely in love with them when we lived here before. (Here are links to the Royal Albatross Centre on Taiaroa Head, and a 2 minute video of the life of an albatross baby on Taiaroa Head named Moana that was adopted by the whole city of Dunedin when we lived here. I cried when she fledged. When albatrosses fledge, they leave New Zealand, fly to South America, and spend 4-10 years there before returning to Taiaroa Head to mate. In the video, Mount Cargill is the pointy hill about a fifth of the way in from the right hand side of the image.)

All the above views from Mount Cargill involve looking south or southeast. To the north is a completely different view, Blueskin Bay (in this photo with the tide about 3/4 out) and the long and lovely Warrington Beach (waves visible). Blueskin Bay has an outlet to the sea which is hidden behind the hill in the foreground.

If you'd like to see a map of the area, here's a link. If you zoom in, you'll see where Mount Cargill is, in a triangle with Northeast Valley and Port Chalmers on the first map.

My Facebook friends will know I've been taking pictures of the amazingly large rhododendrons in Dunedin. The climate here is perfect for rhodies, with mild summers and intermittent rain all summer. Here are a few very tall rhodies to round out this post, plus a pretty fern in our yard. For my Northern Hemisphere friends, remember it's spring here.