Daily Photo – Invercargill

The drive from Bluff to Invercargill was 26 km (16 miles) of pure anticipation. I felt I’d been a bit harsh on one of the world’s most southern cities, so I decided to approach it with an open mind and a sense of expectation. But it’s hard not to prejudge a city that’s been called “the arse end of the world,” or a place where “people only smile when it’s windy because their lips are frozen to their teeth.”

Instead, I chose to focus on a slightly more optimistic description: “a promising settlement that was progressing satisfactorily.” Mind you, that was in 1857, when the town had grown in just a year from two houses and a few tents to a village boasting fourteen houses, two inns, and three stores. Progress, indeed.

Yet, despite my reservations, I arrived with a newfound sense of hope. After all, a place that produced New Zealand motorcycle legend Burt Munro can’t be all bad. Can it?

I completed an uneventful drive into the heart of Invercargill, parked near the well-known Boer War memorial, and went for a wander. I strolled a short distance to the Otepuni Gardens before detouring through the surrounding city streets, eventually arriving back at my car.

The place was pleasant. A steady stream of shoppers hurried about and the weather agreeable. Then, it suddenly dawned on me, there wasn’t a hill to be seen. Invercargill it turns out, is as flat as a pancake. This was something I’d never noticed. At the time I was having this revelation, it also occurred to me that here was a city with no pretence. No trying to be something it wasn’t, Invercargill just was. Quietly doing its thing at the bottom of the country, and maybe that was enough.

I left with an open frame of mind.