Saturday 21 March 2026 – What’s in a name? Being an ignorant sassenach, I had simply expected that Dunedin in New Zealand simply took its name from a Scottish city of the same name. Alternatively, since I knew that it had been where mainly Scottish settlers had made their base in 1848, I wondered if they thought, “well, we’ve done Edinburgh, so we could all this place DunEdin for short”. Or perhaps, tired from their travels, they thought “this journey ‘as done my ‘ead in; let’s call this place ‘Done ‘ead in'”. Apart from the fact that there is no Dunedin in Scotland, the reality is much more prosaic: “Dunedin” is basically the Gaelic for “Edinburgh”. And the place has something of the grandeur of Edinburgh about it, with some very handsome buildings, not the least of which was the Distinction Hotel where we were staying, once the head Post Office building from 1937.

(It’s actually a square building; excuse the odd perspective one gets from a wide angle lens, here.)

We had an afternoon’s fun outing booked, which left us with time on our hands for the morning in a new and strange city. So we went for a walk. Obviously. On it, we passed several more handsome buildings.

which definitely give the place the sort of gravitas one feels in Edinburgh. I even thought, when I saw this

that it was an echo of the Scott Monument in Edinburgh. That one is for Sir Walter Scott; perhaps this one is another of the various ones we’ve seen to Robert Falcon Scott? Alas, no.

Worthy of special mention are the Law Courts

and, of course, the Railway Station,

which is fabulous both outside and in, not the least of the inside attractions being the existence of a very decent restaurant and coffee shop.

The station proper has a wonderful interior

with some lovely stained glass and mosaic tiling.

The Cathedral of St. Paul is an imposing edifice

which has a separate bell tower.

The bell is rung on Sundays and for funerals and also for special occasions; charmingly, these include celebrating the return of the first albatross to the Otago colony each year (more of which later). The interior of the cathedral is quite light

and features some lovely stained glass, some of which is very localised;

I leave you to do a “Where’s Wally?” for the  seagulls, cormorants, fur seals, sealions, penguins, herons and other local wildlife which adorn this window – astonishingly, it appears not to feature a kiwi. There was some very stirring organ music to be heard as we walked around, and, as we left, I noticed that this great welling of sound was being driven by a young talent at the keyboard.

There are other churchy-looking buildings, some of which actually are churches, such as the First Church of Otago

and some of which aren’t any more. This one, for example, is now apartments.

It also sits on something that features a lot in Dunedin – steep streets.

The local brewery, Speights, is also set in the hills just outside the city centre

(I recommend Speight’s Gold Medal Ale, by the way.) Maybe the hilly nature of the terrain was what reminded the original Scottish settlers of Edinburgh. More on steep streets by the by, incidentally.

Regular readers of this blog, of whom there are at least two, will know how keen we are to seek out street art, and Dunedin features a lot of very striking murals and other works. If truth be told, we spent our morning searching out the works of art (Jane had a special map), and seeing the other buildings was almost incidental. This is but a sample of what can be seen around the city.

Dunedin is a very decent city to wander around in and we enjoyed our morning’s rambling and seeking out of the artworks. Our day was not, however, done; we had Something To Do in the afternoon, so had to get back to the hotel in time to be picked up for it. Read All About It in the next entry!