Daily Photo – Oamaru’s Heritage Precinct

I’d driven up to Oamaru for the day and, as always, ended up wandering through the town’s remarkable heritage precinct. It’s one of those places that makes you feel as though you’ve stepped into another century, all creamy limestone facades, iron railings, and a faint whiff of coal smoke in the imagination.

Eventually, I found myself on Harbour Street, the heart of it all, and honestly, it was just lovely. The buildings stood shoulder to shoulder, each one a relic from the town’s glory days, now home to art galleries, antique shops, and cafés that sell tea in mismatched china.

But here’s what I don’t understand: why on earth is the street still open to traffic? It’s narrow, charming, and practically begging to be pedestrian-only. Nothing quite spoils the mood of admiring Victorian architecture like dodging SUVs and utes crawling past at two kilometres an hour. It made no sense at all, I pondered this for some time. Eventually giving up and headed for an Art Gallery then maybe a cup of coffee and biscuit.