Oamaru

Mt. Cook over Lake Pukaki

I feel the need to begin by mentioning that, through the wall of the dorm, I can hear music. Not just any music. The Lord of the Rings. Two Towers, I believe. I thoroughly approve.

Giant Linguini-kelp. I'm sure
there is another name, but
I don't know it :p

When I first drove to Dunedin a few days ago, it was pouring rain, and on the outskirts of the city was a suburb called Abbotsford, its green highway sign visible through the grey haze of the downpour. I laughed. I also forgot to mention that earlier, so its a bit out of chronological context... whatever.




Between Dunedin and Oamaru, I saw some cool rocks. They formed essentially like a pearl would - sediment build up in great big (metre wide) spheres around an initial deposit. Some of these fractured while underground, with the fractures filling with quartz, before being uplifted and having their surrounding rock eroded away.

Oamaru was the strangely lovely town where I stayed last night. Upon my arrival, I met two other girls in my dorm - one from Australia who bore a striking resemblance to Anne Hathaway, and one from Toronto! We talked about Timmy's and roll up the rim and how we were probably currently missing it, and tried to describe iced caps to the Aussie in a way that didn't make them sound disgusting.

Sea lion waiting to ride the waves out

Around 6 pm, we hopped in the car and drove out to Bushy Beach, where a colony of yellow eyed penguins roosts. Several sea lions and one penguin later, we decided to head back... stopping to buy a considerable amount of chocolate along the way. Back at the hostel we watched a movie - 500 Days of Summer. My feelings towards the movie can mostly be summed up with a "hrmph."

Oamaru is a bit of an odd town for New Zealand - described as New Zealand's "only Victorian town", most of the buildings in the city centre date from the last quarter of the 1800s... and they are all built in the greek style out of limestone. Here is (basically) what happened: Oamaru had a natural harbour and no trees, so it was easy for farming and trade to get a foothold ahead of the rest of the Otago area. All this trade led to booming growth, but the lack of trees, and abundance of local limestone, meant that all banks, stores, public buildings, and even the grain elevators/warehouses were constructed as grand, pillared, very elaborate Victorian buildings.

Around 1880, the economy and population was comparable to that of Los Angles. The enormous quantity of sailors passing through the town resulted in 17 hotels and "numerous" brothels - as well as several breweries and a booming illegal alcohol trade. This, in turn, let to Oamaru being the most crime-riddled city in the country.

The harbour was pretty shallow, though, and recession hit the town hard - resulting in Oamaru being the most in-debt town in the country! Due to their being pretty broke for the first half of the 20th century, no modernization of the downtown core occurred. This meant that, by the 1950s, all the Victorian limestone buildings were still there (they're pretty sturdy). A massive restoration movement has given the buildings a second life - they're all still used by banks, stores, hotels, restaurants, etc.

This afternoon consisted of the lovely drive up from Oamaru to Mt. Cook, following the edge of Lake Pukaki. Pukaki, Ohau, and Tekapo are three almost parallel, similarly sized (huge), and similarly coloured (incredible bluer-than-the-bluest-sky) alpine lakes on the eastern side of the Southern Alps. Mt. Cook towers over the northern end of Pukaki, though in between are a scattering of smaller lakes, one of which (Lake Tasman), is only about 30 years old. (Tasman Glacier. Chunk of ice falls off. Melts. Lake! Full of icebergs. More on this tomorrow.)

My poor computer is hungry again, so I'll wrap this up.

Until next time,

Marysa