Dunedin (June 18)

From Queenstown we drove straight over to Dunedin to spend a few days before starting our journey back north again. Dunedin is located on the west coast and is the “doorway” to the Orago Peninsula. It is full of Victorian and Edwardian architecture and is sometimes referred to as the Edinburgh of the south.  It is quite a hilly town and seems large although the population is only around 124,000.

The first night there we decided to take a tour of the Speights Brewery. Speights is one on New Zealand’s most popular beers and has been made in Dunedin since 1876. The tour was very informative and at the end we were allowed to sample the Speights line-up of beers and one cider and operate the taps ourselves. I imagine some people get their monies worth out of the tour at the sampling alone!

The next day we toured Cadbury World – Cadbury’s chocolate factory for New Zealand and for export in the south. The products here are quite different from at home with many of the bars being marshmallow based with a chocolate coating. A New Zealand standard are Jaffas which are chocolate balls covered in a hard orange sugar coating. On the tour we saw several different products being made including the start of the Easter eggs for next year. We also saw a five story high chocolate fall that dumps over one tonne of chocolate. We were all given sample bags and by the end of the tour we each had quite a large bag full – I am sure Bree will help us eat our way through these before we have to leave for Canada.

In the evening we drove out to the tip of the Otago Peninsula to visit Penguin Place, a private conservation reserve that is home to s small group of Yellow Eyed Penguins. These penguins are quite different in that they are solitary. They are also the most endangered type of penguin which makes habitat conservation for these birds very important. The place we visited is actually a working farm but they are protecting all their shoreline and planting native shrubs to give the cover the birds need. They have built in ground tunnels and covered shelters so that you can go down near the beach and watch the birds as they return to shore without frightening them. We were lucky enough to see several of the penguins arrive in the surf and then walk up the beach and into the shoreline area where their nets are located.

That night a storm blew into town and we could hear the wind blowing all night. I thought we might wake to snow or at least rain but it was just windy and cloudy in the morning. We packed up the car once again and prepared for a long drive up into the hill country in South Canterbury where we are going to spend a few days at one of the Icebreaker sheep stations.