New Zealand Travelogue, Part One: Arrival in Dunedin
New Zealand Travelogue, Part One: Arrival in Dunedin
I arrived at Auckland Airport around 11pm on Tuesday evening, but was back on a plane at 7am the next morning to Dunedin, where my New Zealand adventure was to begin. A two-week writing residency at the Michael King Writers Centre in Auckland was the primary reason for my visit, but having never been to New Zealand I couldn’t imagine coming all this way and not seeing more of the country. So, I gave myself five additional days for exploring. My plan: Take the 1h50 flight to Dunedin on the south part of the South Island and spend five days making my way back to Auckland by bus, train and ferry.
Sidenote: I was very impressed by the better-than-mainstream film selection on my Air New Zealand flight from Auckland to Dunedin. I came across the recently-released film Breaking and it was one of the best films I’ve ever seen. Amazing writing, directing and acting, tragically based on a true story — revealing truths about America’s dysfunctional social systems that often are misconstrued in literature and film.
Dunedin, pronounced dun-EDIN, is a town of about 130,000 and the main hub for the southern region of the South Island. It is also home to the University of Otago, the country’s oldest university (established 1869), with an enrollment of about 21,000 students — a significant portion of the total population. The people I spoke with in town told me Dunedin is more of a university town than anything else — not a major tourist or business hub, but with a decent economy and steadily growing population thanks to its function as a regional centre and home of a highly-ranked university. While there is a large population of people with Scottish ancestry on the South Island, I did not encounter any of them during my brief visit and the cultural influence was not as pronounced as I had expected it to be. From talking with locals, I learned that one would need to travel a bit further south to Invercargill and the surrounding region to discover more Scots.
My first of two full days in Dunedin began at Larnach Castle. A place and its founder only Scottish in name, with William Larnach having grown up in Australia and journeying to New Zealand in 1867 seeking to profit off the gold rush as a banker and businessman. Four years later, with his amassing fortune, he purchased the land up on the hills of the Otago Peninsula looking back at the town of Dunedin from about eight miles away to build his dream castle, which remains the only castle in New Zealand. When his wife passed away, he married her sister after transferring the castle to her in the interest of avoiding losing it to bankruptcy. This started a tide of resentment among his children and grandchildren, who did not agree with his choices nor share his interest in castle-living.
The castle fell into disuse and disrepair from about 1918, until Barry and Margaret Barker, a motivated couple with the privilege of spare time and money purchased it with plans to renovate, inhabit and eventually bring to its current status as a tourist attraction, with lodging and a restaurant. The castle is well-maintained and I enjoyed exploring it, but the extensive gardens were the highlight for me. Immaculately designed and cared for, with stunning views overlooking the bay and peninsula, the gardens were one of the most beautiful and peaceful places I have ever been.