Tag Archives: Street Art

Dunedin – Handsome and Arty

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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!

 

 

The Third Island

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Wednesday 18 March 2026 – We could afford to make fairly stately progress southwards because our only dependency was on a ferry whose time had been rescheduled to 5.15pm, and that was a mere 200km away or so.  The weather outlook was pretty decent,

so the Southern Scenic Route seemed a good idea. We exited Te Anau past the Fjordland Vintage Machinery Museum,

which was intriguing, but not sufficiently so as to divert us. The scenic route was, indeed, scenic, with some lovely cloud pattern in the hills.

Jane had looked out a coffee stop at the Brunel Peaks Cafe,

which didn’t immediately look promising, but turned out to be a delightful choice – excellent coffee and cake, displays of local art and produce and friendly service.

As we wended our way southwards, we noticed an area where tussock grass had taken over – not something we’d seen before.

Tussocks are normally something you’d only see in alpine areas in NZ, because by and large the lowland areas were forests – not a tussock growth area – until people came and then they converted forest to farmland. So it was interesting to see the tussocks making a comeback where (I assume) farmland has been left untouched for a while.

Our next stop was at the Clifden Suspension Bridge. The name sounds suspiciously like the famous bridge in Clifton, Bristol, in the UK, and actually the NZ one even looks a little like Brunel’s creation.

It was built in 1899 to a design by the Southland County Engineer C H Howarth, and at the time had the longest main span (111.5m) in the country. It’s a pedestrian-only bridge these days. Jane noticed that there were some young things Up To Something on the far side of the bridge, accompanied by much shouting and laughter.  In the end, this is what they were doing.

They were wearing safety helmets, and so we supposed that what they were up to was legit; but they were clearly having some fun.

Jane had noticed something else on our route that had piqued her interest:

The Templeton Flax Mill Heritage Museum. All over New Zealand we had heard of the importance of flax to both indigenous and immigrant communities, so we were interested to understand more.

A few words about flax, first.  New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax) is a completely different plant from that which we call flax in the UK (Linum usitatissimum); delicate, blue-flowered UK flax is cultivated for its fine fibres – used to make linen – its seeds and their oil. In the UK, flax seeds are linseeds: I remember from my childhood, for example, the importance of linseed oil for treating cricket bats to stop them cracking or splintering. New Zealand flax has huge spear shaped, architectural, fibrous leaves, of huge importance to the Maori because of its “flaxibility” (ho, ho). The coarse, strong fibres could be made into rope, clothing, baskets, nets, canoe sails, even; the plant has medicinal properties and food value. Flax plants grow everywhere across the country; it’s amazing that something so easily available is of such huge utility. When the European settlers encountered the plant and recognised its utility, and recognised the similarities between the Maori processing of its fibres and the processing of flax back home, they applied the familiar name of “flax” to this foreign plant.

So, we were intrigued. The Templeton Mill Museum is only active on special Open Days or by appointment, so Jane got in touch with the owners to see whether there was any chance we could see it. They said that they weren’t officially open today but that, since the door was unlocked, we were welcome to look inside!

It’s the only authentic flax mill plant operating on its original 1940s site, showcasing 1860s to 1970s flax processing technology. It was in full operation until 1972, amazingly.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of information inside about how the final flax products are made from the leaves (foreground below)

The process involves harvesting, stripping, washing, bleaching, drying and scutching (a process of removing impurities from the fibres) before the fibres are baled into hanks (background above). Outside the mill, various varieties of flax are grown

and there is a drying rack for the fibres on display.

All of these various stops were pleasant diversions on our journey, which led us to Bluff, where we had to catch a ferry to Stewart Island. This ferry is another exclusive by RealNZ, by the way. We had thought that perhaps we could grab a coffee in the ferry terminal building, but the operation was a bit more basic than that; they operate a car park for ferry travellers and there’s a waiting room, but that’s about it. When we checked in, the chap who helped us suggested we went to “the pub across the road” for a coffee whilst we waited.  So we did – sort of. Actually, we’d noticed, on our way in, that Bluff was a very basic sort of town, but it did seem to have a lot of street art. So before we went for coffee, we strolled around for a bit, and found a decent array of murals

and other installations.

There was an artist’s studio/shop called JIMI RABBITZ, with some really bizarre creations,

and (allegedly) the world’s most southerly chippie.

We called into the Eagle Hotel for a coffee

but they didn’t do hot drinks, so we had a cold beer instead. It was a pretty hardcore traditionalist sort of place, with a monosyllabic barman, a dartboard, the rules of Quoits posted on the wall, and other pub games of a more mysterious nature available to play, too.

The time came for us to board our ferry, which was a catamaran type, a bit smaller than the ones we’d travelled on the day before,

and so we trooped on board and took our seats.  The skipper gave the usual safety chat and then set off.  He said that it was “pretty calm” on the water. If so, I’d hate to be in what he called rough, because on the first stretch of the journey, it felt like the ferry was airborne at times. It certainly crashed around a lot, but he seemed unfazed by it and no-one on board was sick, so maybe this was normal. After a bit everything calmed down and the remainder was a smooth journey (about an hour in total). I noticed, as we headed into Stewart Island, that the skipper had given one of the crew a chance to have a go at driving.

So: Stewart Island, then. Had you asked me, before this trip, how many islands constituted New Zealand, I would have said “two”; and I would have been wrong. There are three main islands, and Stewart Island is that third island, roughly 1800 km² in size. (You’ll remember, of course, that Cook fudged the island issue when he did his charting of the country in 1769/70, when he came up with this chart:

Drawn by James Cook - International Cartographic Association, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1416909

He deliberately left Stewart Island as part of the mainland in order to fool those damn’ Frenchies and stop them sniffing around with a view to claiming the island for themselves. But, as we’d just confirmed for ourselves, it really is an island. 85% of it is a national park and the only settlement is a town called Oban, which is a small place with fewer than 500 permanent inhabitants.

We were due to be staying at the Kaka Retreat. Rather than having to heave al our bags on to the ferry, we had only brought our backpacks and one small suitcase, so, since everything in Oban is close to everything else in Oban we were happy with a plan to walk to our accommodation. On the way I was less than happy, because although the distances are short, the streets are not flat and although it was a short walk it was quite a steep one, so I was glad to get there. There was no reception evident, so we wandered in and Jane was greeted by a woman at the first chalet who simply said “you’re not in this one”. Somewhat taken aback, Jane asked how we found out which one we were in, and was told to call the Bay Motel. She did so, and that’s when we found out that we’d managed to walk straight past the Bay Motel reception committee on the wharf – they had been waiting there with a sign with our names, and a van to take us up to the Retreat. Thank God for mobile phones, eh?

Anyway, the lady in charge came up from the wharf with a couple of other guests who were staying there and showed us around the accommodation. We settled in (yes, Twinings finest Earl Grey was involved) and prepared ourselves for our activity that evening, which was due to start in about an hour’s time….

…and which you’ll have to read about in the next entry. See you there!

 

Christchurch: I – the city centre

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Thursday 5 March 2026 – Guess what? The drive down to Christchurch from Kaikoura is quite scenic.

It’s reassuring to note that they take some precautions against falling boulders in places,

but then we were heading into a place with quite a record of geological instability.

We arrived in Christchurch in good time check in to our hotel, the very well-organised George. Whilst Jane settled in to our room, I went to hand back our hire car; the nice manager at Budget was good enough to waive the charge for the extra day we incurred through the mix-up back in Auckland. On the way back I got some milk in for the inevitable cups of Twinings finest Earl Grey and also discovered a significant characteristic of Christchurch – the street art,

which is sprinkled liberally throughout the city, quite often on walls surrounding car parks. There are a lot of car parks on the open spaces throughout Christchurch that arise courtesy, one suspects, of the massive earthquakes that devastated the city in September 2010 and, more tragically, in February 2011, more of which later. I also passed the Victoria Jubilee Clock

built in celebration of Queen Victoria’s jubilee in 1897 (and rebuilt in 1930, presumably after an earthquake in 1929). I also noted that they have problems with the English language here similar to the ones we have in England.

The hotel room carried a reminder of the earthquake, too.

Anyway, we had some time to ourselves, both during this afternoon and tomorrow morning. So we went for walks. Obviously. These are photographs from our peregrinations, not necessarily in the order in which we saw things.

Street Art

We took a lot of photos of the street art, because there’s a lot of street art. There are some huge installations across the city centre

Trompe l’oeuil frontage for something

and many, many smaller examples.

It seems that any space is game for being covered.

A standby generator in Mona Vale

Other Art

As well as the murals, there are plenty of other installations around the city,  both old and new.

James Cook
Queen Victoria
Not sure if this is an art installation or a working phone box

Architecture

Obviously, since much of the city was destroyed in 2010 and 2011, there are many, many new buildings. Accommodation has sprung up all over the city with an agenda to attract people back to living there.

One famous post-earthquake construction, a container mall (similar in concept to the Tin Town that sprang up after the Napier earthquake), has since been demolished, and replaced with a very modern shopping centre

and the city’s restored tramline runs a tourist hop-on, hop-off service through it and round the other sights of the central area.

The city itself feels a little….odd. I suppose the lack of skyscrapers (there’s unsurprisingly a moratorium on tall buildings except under exceptional circumstances) and the ubiquity of modern constructions have a bearing on this. It’s a very pleasant city to walk around in. Parts of it have been restored to their previous glory, like New Regent Street,

along which the tram runs.

There’s been plenty of construction of new buildings, of course. The river Avon runs through the city, giving it a pleasant, green, focus

(the statue in the river there is, yes, an Anthony Gormley).

This greenness is not normal, by the way. Apparently, by this time of the year, all of the green spaces have usually been burnt brown; but it’s been such a wet summer that the grass is still green. As we walked around, the weather was delightful – 25°C and sunshine – so Christchurch folk’s bad luck was our good fortune.

Some modern buildings are just Deloitteful

but all the time the spectre of such a recent upheaval (literal and figurative) hangs over the city.

There are also several handsome old buildings which were damaged in the earthquake and which haven’t been restored (yet, one hopes),

including this teacher training college, which is a very striking building.

There is a museum, Quake City, dedicated to the earthquake, which is a very intense education about the impact it had. One thing I hadn’t appreciated was the constant barrage of quakes that has hit the city since its inception. Since 1844 there have been over 20 earthquakes in the area – they’re almost routine. What marks the 2010/2011 earthquakes out is the timing: September 2010 was a larger upheaval (7.1), but it happened in the middle of the night when the city was quiet. The one that followed, in February 2011, was “only” 6.1 but it was in the middle of the day, many of the buildings were weakened from September and so foundered, and many lives were lost in the collapsing buildings. The devastation was huge and widespread, as shown in photographs in Quake City.

Some buildings survived,

Was a Church, is now a microbrewery!

and, particularly, wooden ones tended to be able to withstand the shaking.

But, of course, many didn’t, notably the cathedral and the basilica.

Political wrangling has put a stop to restoration work of this cathedral, which seems an outrage until one considers that there’s not enough taxpayer money to go around and there are many more important calls on what money there is than, frankly, restoring churches. In that context, it’s a bit strange to note that there was money to build a brand new sports stadium

(seating capacity 30,000 but without its own car parking) but not to construct a mass transit rail system which would go a long way to relieve the city’s chronic rush hour traffic gridlock. There’s clearly been a lot of building, many examples of which could possibly have been funded entirely from the private sector.

An example, though, of what can be done is shown by the Cardboard Cathedral, formally called the Transitional Cathedral of the city, which is a truly remarkable (a) building and (b) piece of thinking.

There really is a huge amount of cardboard in its construction.

In a move that should surprise no-one, the building regs were changed somewhat after the earthquake, and ever since, all buildings have to have a minimum 50 years of expected life; the cardboard cathedral is expected to last well over a century. We learned this from a conversation with a lovely chap called Richard Parker, a volunteer at the cathedral and also a man involved with the city’s building programmes.

The Cardboard Cathedral is quite an inspiring construction, both for what it represents – rebuilding after a major setback – and how it’s done – with vision and imagination. Our visit to it and to Quake City were probably the most significant segments of our wanderings around in this very pleasant city; and we weren’t quite done. We had our fourth and final meeting with old friends, and were able to explore a few other aspects of the place. I’ll detail them in the next entry.