As I am still in recovery mode I’m only working 4 days a week at the moment. While this might sound like a brilliant idea, the flipside is that I’m pretty much broke all the time! Still, it’s all good really. My friend Steve had some work to do down in Dunedin and invited me to come along for the ride. Dunedin is a place I had only ever driven through so I was happy to get the chance to have a look around.
My impression of Dunedin was of a very vibrant student town. I really liked the compact layout and the fact that everyone walks everywhere. It’s a very Scottish town – being a country where Scottish Presbyterians settled in to build their ideal town. In fact I went to the Otago settlers museum there and there was a bit on the Irish in Otago. We Irish were really discriminated against in the beginning as they didn’t want the mainly Catholic religion to be practiced in their new colony.
It was interesting seeing what the settlers had to go through to get out here. They were allowed to bring one kist with them (3’*2’*2′). Really not the biggest baggage allowance you could imagine.
I also checked out the cadbury factory and did their tour. I was pretty surprised to hear that sometimes NZ supplies product to Europe.
Also checked out some really incredible landscape photography (Andris Apse. Luckily it’s still going to be in Dunedin when I’m down there in a couple of weeks time with my brother and his wife.. so will definitely be recommending we get there.
That evening (Friday) Steve and I headed into the Silverpeaks reserve. We got there at about 5pm with a good hours light to get to our hut for the evening. Just as we were getting close Steve goes ‘Actually, I have a sneaking suspicion that the hut might have been taken out’. I thought many evil things at that point, and even more when we arrived at the site and there was an empty grassy space where the hut used to be.
So we decided to walk on and try the next hut (possum hut). It was a slippery and dark experience and we weren’t even sure if the hut would be there when we got there. It was.. but was in pretty awful condition. Someone had pitched a tent in the cut (complete with dirty newspapers and whisky bottles). We decided to let the tent down and sleep on top of it where it was marginally cleaner.
As I was letting down the tent I came across a dead possum in the corner of the hut. Ick. I really didn’t sleep too well that night.
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The next day we walked on to Jubilee hut. The hut was in excellent shape only having been installed in Feb. I was looking forward to a nice quiet relaxing evening – when a group arrived (7 people) and then the Otago University Tramping Club (13 people) so there were 22 of us in a 10 bunk hut. We were snug!
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Still, a great weekend tramp. I’m ridiculously unfit at the moment – really need to get out more at the weekends. Would you believe – a button on my work trousers popped the other day! really is the beginning of the end :)
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