Dunedin

We actually came to Dunedin a few days before we started WWOOFing at Kanuka farm, and have come back here to spend Christmas and New Years since then. So to go back almost a month, and then to jump ahead to the last week, here's what Dunedin has held in store for us...

Moeraki Boulders

We stopped off to see these famous boulders on our drive from Oamaru to Dunedin. "The Moeraki boulders are grey-coloured septarian concretions which have been exposed through shoreline erosion from black mudstone coastal cliffs that back the beach. They originally formed in ancient sea floor sediments during the early Paleocene some 60 million years ago. Maori legend tells that the boulders are remains of calabashes, kumaras and eel baskets that washed ashore after the legendary canoe, the Araiteuru was wrecked at nearby Shag Point (Matakaea)." Unfortunately, we went at high tide when the boulders were being splashed by the ocean, but I still managed to climb onto a few, though I did get quite wet.

The Moeraki Boulders

Just before a wave hit and gave me a good splash

Shag Point

Another stop-off on our way to Dunedin, shag point was a must-see because of the little icon of seals on the map beside its name - and Brent really wanted to see some seals. This time, however, high tide worked to our advantage (I think), because there were plenty of seals around, lazing in the afternoon sun or fighting over... uhhh... lady seals. or maybe fish. There was also a large colony of seagulls that didn't bat an eye when we came up right beside them. As well as some large black and white birds that we at first mistook for penguins (we were quite excited). Ah well.

lounging in the sun

seal fight!

Baldwin Street

Dunedin's main claim to fame is Baldwin Street, otherwise known as the steepest residential street in the world. It does indeed have houses the entire way up, and it is quite steep. We can assure you this as we walked all the way up and then back down again. In flip flops (called "jandals" here). At the top there is a water fountain and a bench, and every year in July the Cadbury factory hosts a chocolate festival where it rolls Jaffas (orange candy coated milk chocolate balls) down the street. This being December we mostly just got sweaty from the walk, but had we been here in the winter months, we might have seen a sight such as this...

mmm chocolate!

Instead, we did get to see this...

This would NOT be a good hill to rollerblade down

Cadbury Factory Tour

Speaking of chocolate, we did take the Cadbury factory tour, as it is located right in the city center of Dunedin, and we had a bit of time to kill before we made it to the farm to start WWOOFing a little later in the day. For the tour, we had to don large white hair nets (and beard nets, for those who needed them. In our group it was only Brent), remove all jewelry, and sample lots of chocolate. It was definitely a nice-smelling tour, and there was one part where they dumped excessive amounts of liquid chocolate from the ceiling into a container below, splashing the walls and the stairs all the way down the tower below, simply for our amusement - they do not reuse that chocolate. At the end of the tour we were unleashed in a large room filled with all of their various chocolate treats for sale, but luckily we were too full from the tour to indulge.

belly rub satisfaction

----Insert former post of Kanuka Farm to get a sequential order, then jump ahead to our current time in Dunedin-----

We decided to come back to Dunedin after our stint at the farm, as we wanted a stable room for a few weeks to enjoy Christmas and New Years without having to find camping spots, or move from place to place, etc. We settled on a hostel called Elm Lodge, which we picked because, drum rolls please, it has a free hot tub and sauna! Also, our room is big and a little separate from the rest of the rooms, with a nice kitchen that isn't used by many of the other hostel goers. Now that we have a bit more time to check out the sites, we have gone to see...

Tunnel Beach

This is a beach separated from the main road / land by large cliffs. A wealthy politician commissioned a tunnel to be built into these cliffs in the 1870s, so that his family may have access to the beach. Now anyone can get to the beach by walking 20 minutes through farmland, and then down the narrow tunnel to the fairly secluded beach. Again, we went at high tide when we couldn't see as much, but it was still very beautiful, and we did climb some of the large rocks around to take it all in for awhile longer.

on the walk down to tunnel beach

the tunnel

tunnel beach and the climbable rocks

Otago Museum

The museum in Dunedin is free and actually had a lot of really interesting things in it. When we went, they were doing a special feature on faces, and we were able to age ourselves at 72 years if we were both obese and smokers. It was not a pretty sight. They also had lots of artifacts from all around Oceania, lots of Maori history, and lots of interesting stuff from around the world as well. Here is what Brent would look like as the Mona Lisa:

a slightly hairier version

Dunedin Public Art Gallery

This was also free, and on the day we went we also got to see a school choir perform Christmas songs. There was one little girl at the front who wouldn't sing, but would instead hold on to the bars (they were on the 2nd story looking down at the main level) and stare at everyone.

on the walk down to the art gallery

For other highlights, we went out to a Scottish pub on Tuesday night, as Jock (our WWOOFing host) was playing the button accordion with a bunch of other people in a sort of impromptu Celtic jam session. We had a few pints from the local breweries and hung out at the pub for awhile, and got to see Jock in musical action - he was really quite good!

some of the musicians - Jock is on the far left with the big beard

on the walk back from the pub, after just the right amount of pints

And, finally, I will leave you with the story of Fuggles the snuggle cat. There are apparently two resident cats at Elm Hostel, but Fuggles seems to be the only one that hangs around our area of the hostel consistently. He is a very ugly white cat with a squished in face, some may call him fugly, and he really enjoys snuggling, which is why we call him Fuggles. We don't know his real name. He seems to have a sore under one of his eyes, he really enjoys being pet (though if you scratch his belly he will attack), and he is a very deep, snuggly, sleeper...

Fuggles

snuggling the sunscreen

in charge of the remote control

hungry for some crackers

dreaming of painting up the town

Kanuka Farm

Otherwise known as our first WWOOFing spot, Kanuka Farm is the “lifestyle block” (personal farmland) that we have been working on for almost 2 weeks in exchange for our room and board. The WWOOFing program (willing workers on organic farms) is quite active in New Zealand, and it’s relatively easy to find hosts who are happy for the help and company of foreign guests. Our hosts are Alice and Jock; Alice is a careers teacher from New Zealand who maintains the organic farm as a lifestyle choice to try and quell her many allergies, and her husband Jock is a sort of jack-of-all-trades originally from Scotland who upkeeps the large forested area at the back of their property. The farm is about a 25 minute drive from Dunedin, and it is home to several pigs, chickens (called “chooks” in New Zealand), and sheep, as well as two Jack Russell Terriers that are regularly bred in order to sell their puppies as pets, and a few house cats. We do 4 hours of work each day in exchange for a sleep out cottage behind the house and our three meals of the day, most of which come out of the gardens and is organic, well prepared, and delicious.

The farmhouse and the cabin that we sleep in

Our jobs so far have involved a lot of weeding, some harvesting of produce that Alice sells at the farmers market, feeding the animals, planting (it is still spring here), mowing, mulching, and we spent one Saturday morning at the farmers market helping to sell the produce and enjoying a lot of the food for sale from the other vendors. Every morning we don cargo pants and rain boots (“gumboots” as the Kiwis call them) and have breakfast at the house – Alice and Jock keep lots of peanut butter around when they have North American WWOOFers, and then spend a few hours in the garden, usually closely followed by Buster and Betsy, the terriers. The afternoons are ours, and apart from some fairly frequent napping, we have managed to find a lot of things to do with our stint in rural NZ, such as beach visits, driving while singing about sheep (there really are a lot of sheep here), hikes, reading, and practicing the guitar.

Farmer Brent in Overalls tending to the potatoes

Meet Boris. He is HUGE, and he has his own little area of the yard for grass and weed munching and general lazing around. He is quite a lazy pig, though if he suspects you might have food he will come running to greet you. It was a little intimidating at first when a massive animal with tusks came running at us, but he is very good natured and always stops his sprint beside you, looking to get pet and sniffing around for tasty treats, like the remnants of our weeding, the leftovers from beer brewing, or the scraps from the kitchen.

Boris the beauty contestant

This is Borsis’ girlfriend and their two little piglets. She has an Irish name that is hard to remember, and the piglets have yet to be named. They make the most noise when they want to be fed by her, but she grunts back at them and moves away. They will follow her though, oinking and screeching until she finally gives in and lays on her side so that they can eat.

om nom nom nom nom

The piglet in front is Brent's favourite because of the racing stripe on its back

This is Polly, my favourite of the sheep. Her “baa” sound like a cross between a really deep, loud belch and a regular sheep noise. While all the other sheep are a little wary of visitors and will keep their distance, Polly will come running up to greet you, loves to be pet and scratched behind the ear, and will belch a loud BBAAAHHHH goodbye when you leave. In this picture she is expecting a lamb.

oh, hello Polly

Millennium Track Hike

We worked a few extra hours over a couple of days and then took a day off to sleep in and do the millennium track, which starts at Taeirie Mouth and follows the Taeirie river for about 8 kilometres. It took us about 2 hours to do – Jock dropped us off and picked us back up – and it had some pretty stunning views along the way.

stunning view # 1. heh heh. just kidding.

the winding Taeirie River

Our Guitar

In the spirit of our nomad-ed-ness, as a way to pass the evenings, and because we both would like to know how to play, we’ve bought a guitar and have been slowly teaching ourselves how to play. We’ve downloaded a few songs with simple chords (and a cheat sheet for how to play those chords), and we have been building up some nice calluses on our fingers while choppily strumming away. So far we can fairly confidently butcher Last Kiss, Take it Easy, Bad Moon Rising, Father and Son, Me and Julio down by the Schoolyard, Wish you were Here, and Brown Eyed Girl. Also, Brent just loves my singing. Its true, he told me so.

Tuning the guitar

Pavlova

Now for the most exciting bit. Being in a real New Zealand home with a great chef, I asked Alice to teach us how to make a pavlova, which is a typical cake eaten at Christmas, birthdays, etc. Alice maintains that, “any good Kiwi woman ought to know how to make a decent pavlova.” Her recipe is the simplest that I have come across, and she says that it is tastier than many of the other, more difficult, ones that she has tried. The results were definitely delicious, and we topped it with rose petal whipping cream, as edible rose petals are one of the things that she grows on her farm.

mmm pavlova

Enjoy!

Easy Pavlova

- 5 eggs whites - older eggs work much better to hold the shape of the cake, use the ones that have been sitting in the fridge for quite a while
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 3/4 dessert spoon (~2 teaspoons) corn flour
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 teaspoon vinegar
- 4 tablespoons cold water

- Beat all of the ingredients with an electric beater on high until it becomes quite stiff and glossy - about the consistency of a meringue. The mixture should be able to hold its shape. This will take about 10 - 15 minutes.
- Spoon / spatula out onto a foil covered baking sheet into a glob with a flat top that resembles a cake (you can use a mould but this is the traditional kiwi way)
- Put in a preheated 200 C (400 F) oven on the bottom rack.
- After 3 minutes (yes only 3 minutes) turn the oven off and allow the cake to cool inside the oven until it is cold (overnight). Do not open the oven door. The goal is to get a crisp outside and a marshmallow-y inside.
- Ice with generous amounts of whipped cream, and top with sliced kiwis and/or strawberries.

If the cake doesn’t slide easily off of the foil (mine didn’t), you can just transfer it with the foil onto a plate, and when you cut it up and serve it you should be able to get the individual pieces off the foil, or you could just warn people that its there. The cake can be pretty finicky and it might break or collapse if you try to force it off the tinfoil whole.

Oamaru

We stumbled into the town of Oamaru almost by accident. After slowly making our way south from Christchurch, we spotted the town on the map and thought it would be a nice place to hang out for a few days, and to perhaps sleep in a real bed for a few nights. We looked at the lonely planet's take on the town  - penguins! whisky tours! cheese factory! and so it was decided. We checked into a backpackers (that's the Kiwi word for a hostel) slash art gallery called Chillawhile, and that is exactly what we did. The hostel is run by a woman named Kelly, who has a young daughter named Saol who talks up and plays with all of the guests. Our first night there was a potluck, where we got to try the typical New Zealand dessert of pavlova. Dee-licious. We will certainly attempt to make this one at home, though we've heard it's tough to do.

our hostel, converted from a giant old house

 

playing a giant game of jenga with Brent and Angus

Here's what we've been doing in Oamaru:

Penguins

The town of Oamaru's main claim to fame are its two penguin populations - the yellow-eyed and the blue penguins - who come back to nest at the beaches in the evenings. Our first night we went to go check out the yellow-eyed penguins (the free show, apparently to see the blue penguins you have to dish out $25). There is a walkway set up overlooking the beach, and around 7pm a few of the penguins showed up to feed their young, who were also giving us a show by chirping loudly in the bushes. Their waddles were pretty amazing, and one of the older Canadian ladies who was watching beside us commented that she also waddles like that after a good meal. On our way back to the car one of the tourists had leaned against an electric fence that held cows in the farmland next to the beach, and had fallen into the farm area from the shock. He was quite unsure of how he would be able to get back out again.

waddle waddle waddle

On Friday we went out to a pub called "the penguin club" because it has a jam night every week, and on the way there, we saw some of the blue penguins in the ally! When they spotted us too they started making some noise and waddling off, but it was pretty surreal. No camera on us though. bummer.

Historic District

Oamaru calls itself a "Victorian town" and it has quite a lively historical district right downtown, where you can rent out period dresses, see old horse carriages and grain houses, or purchase bread from one of the many bakeries. When we checked out the Victorian dresses we met the mayor and his wife, who told us about their time living in Vancouver and tried to convince us to move to Oamaru. There were also a few great art galleries in the area, and some interesting sculptures. This is also where you can get a tour of the whisky factory, but when we went the building was being remade into a restaurant / bar, as the whisky distillery was deemed "hazardous" and the public was no longer allowed to view it. The woman who was in charge of the change, however, gave us an impromptu tour of the new facilities and excitedly showed us all of the changes that were taking place. After that we attempted to take a cheese factory tour, but were told that there was only a viewing room. There we saw how blue cheese was made. There was LOTS of mould. We bought some delicious brie though, and called it a day.

walking into the historic district

a metal gorilla statue atop an old car

A beautiful art gallery in the historic district - this one also had a few birds flying about

Elephant Rocks

We took a drive to see the elephant rocks, which may be best recognized for their appearance in The Chronicles of Narnia. Their story: "The Elephant Rocks of Waitaki Valley in NZ started out as limey sand on the sea floor probably 24 million years ago. The sand was buried and gradually turned into rock, but probably within the last million years the limestone was uplifted and the water and the wind weathered the limestone into the shapes that the elephant rocks are today." The day was overcast and a little cold and we had to step over a lot of cow dung to get to them, but they were still quite impressive.

Brent and the elephant rocks

Waimate and the Wallaby Farm

We took a drive to the nearby town of Waimate to check out the eccentric wallaby lady, who cares for and breeds wallabies (they look like miniature kangaroos). Wallabies roam free in Waimate as a pest, and can be hunted at any time because they are a nuisance. It is a huge fine if you take any wallabies out of the town, and they have been contained to the area of Waimate because they don't like water, and the town is flanked on each side by rivers. On the drive there we stopped at information to get directions, and outside on the street one of the local berry farmers was having a promotion that involved free strawberries and cheesecake. mmm. Also incredible on the drive there was a navigational error that created a pretty amazing detour, as we ended up on a rural highway where a farmer was moving his sheep down the road. Check out the video:

Once at the farm we found that the wallaby lady was most certainly eccentric - a hunter had recently brought her the joey from a mother wallaby he had shot, and she was caring for it as its pseudo mother by swinging it around in a fabric pouch and bottle feeding it (we also got to hold it). Her house was filled with various items of taxidermy and fake forest and plants, and I was directed to the bathroom as "the room with the possum on the door." We got to wander through the wallaby enclosures, which were just fenced in areas of her very large back yard. She gave us some food for them, and they would come and eat right out of our hands, often resting their own hands on ours for support. They also hopped like kangaroos, which I thought was pretty amazing. As it is spring here, some of the mothers had joeys in their pouches, and even the mothers with pouch wallabies would eat from our hands, though quite tentatively. Also on the farm were ducks, doves, a "differently abled" pony with spinabifida, chickens, peacocks (including a male peacock who would put on a great mating presentation for all of the female birds around, even the chickens in cages), and sheep.

feeding the wallabies

our flamboyant peacock friend - these feathers vibrate when he wants to impress

momma wallaby with her joey

Brent

Christchurch to Oamaru!

Well, we finally packed Leonardo up and left Christchurch on our journey south. The weekend before we left the city, we went to a music festival in a beautiful Fjord north west of the city. The music was all DJ's and Electronica, which isn't normally my cup of tea, but the atmosphere was fun, and we had a blast camping out in a beautiful area, while hanging out with some interesting people. The night we got back, we didn't want to dish out the money for another night at the hostel, so we sleazed it up and slept in Leonardo on the street outside the hostel. It was a tight fit with the both of us, but it worked, and we both got a decent sleep.

The Journey...

Day 1

After a few last minute errands, we packed up and left the city. On the first day, we took a scenic route to Rakaia, following a winding road through sheep pastures and hills along the edge of the mountains, seeing Rakaia gorge before turning back to the coast for the town itself. After searching and searching for a campsite to no avail, we ended up paying for a camp site at a campground... not our first choice, but we had a clean shower at least...

Rakaia Gorge

Day 2

Our second day started out kind of dreary, as we headed into the mountains, but then got clearer and more scenic as we went. Passing through Burke's Pass on our way to Lake Tekapo was beautiful, and just as we thought it couldn't possibly get any better, the sun cleared, we came through the pass and made it to Lake Tekapo. We had better luck finding a campsight, as you'll see below, but we had to work for it. After driving around the lake with no camping signs everywhere, we finally found a 4WD track without one. We took Leonardo down to the beach, and found a lovely, but very windy, spot.

Burke's Pass

Lake Tekapo Campsite

Lake Tekapo Sunset

Day 3

We awoke to a lovely morning, and had a quick granola bar breakfast before packing up and heading out. On the way down to Oamaru, we passed Lake Pukaki, and had a wonderful view of Mt. Cook, the highest point in Australasia. Once again, we descended from the mountains toward the coast. After taking 3 days to do a 3 hour drive, we finally arrived in Oamaru... More to come on that tomorrow.

Lake Pukaki and Mount Cook