24.2.11 – Gardens and Settlers (Dunedin, New Zealand)

 24.2.11 – Gardens and Settlers (Dunedin, New Zealand)

Back to typical tourism, although it feels a bit strange as the TV, newspapers and everyone you meet can only talk about one thing – the quake.  We drive into Dunedin, and stop at the Settlers Museum.  Dunedin was founded in 1848, by Scottish entrepreneurs, churchmen and ordinary folk, from Edinburgh, Glasgow, and all airts and pairts in between.  A picture shows the town in the 1850’s – a ruckle of wooden houses beside the bay.  And streets named Princes Street, High Street, George Street.  These folk had a big vision of what this city would become and it has come true.

Chinese Garden

We move on to the Chinese Garden.  Why a Chinese Garden?  Dunedin is also a gold town, and Chinese people came here to mine.  They experienced discrimination and incredible hardship but many stayed and became New Zealanders, and now this garden recognises their struggle.  Crafted in China, and built here by Chinese skill, the garden is a pool of serenity in the middle of the city.  Tall polished wooden columns, sleek and smooth to the touch; grey hand made tiles sweeping in elegant curves, green water through which goldfish gleam, diaphanous tails slowly swaying; a little curved bridge, geometrically patterned screens at the windows.

Dunedin Station

A quick glance into the Station building, a festival of Victorian ceramic tiles and mosaic floors.  Then to the Botanic Gardens for lunch – verdant with roses, huge shady trees and ducks everywhere.  Most of them are Mallards, but two are larger, chocolate brown with black tales and one with a black head and one with a white one. 



Signal Hill



Then up to a viewpoint on the hill.  From here, Dunedin is stretched out below, covering the hills opposite, hugging the coastline of its sheltered bay.  The memorial here commemorates the centenary of Dunedin, and the view brings it home just what those settlers achieved in only 169 years.  We then met some of those settlers, although they were a bit reticent as they were residing in the graveyard.  Folks from Glasgow, Edinburgh, Islay, Renfrew.  A Baptist Minister from Wales ‘He made bad men good, and good men better.  He was loved by men and used by God’.  Another gravestone remembered a young dad, left buried in Larbert, Stirlingshire, and a mum, his wife, died at a good old age in Dunedin.  Visualise the son, persuading his mother to emigrate and make a new life to overcome her tragic loss.

And then home to Emma's house, via a long golden beach, washed by green Pacific rollers, peppered by surfers of various levels of skill.  Emma's grandmother and her parents came to New Zealand in 1869 and travelled inland following the wagons.  So she is a settler.  And she is also has a garden, from which we ate crunchy lettuce, cucumber and beetroot.  Settlers and gardens, all day.

And then back to the TV and the unfolding tradgedy that we were a tiny part of only two days ago.