When it comes to New Zealand weather, you really do need to keep your options open. In the blink of an eye, the weather can change from bright sunshine to rain without much warning. This is particularly true of the alpine passes found in the Southern Alps. Although, when I was there, the weather didn’t change from sunshine to rain, but to snow. Heavy, thick snow that stops vehicles and closes roads!
The thing about some New Zealand roads is that they haven’t really ventured too far from the route discovered by some adventurous soul who spent days hacking their way through the bush, presumably because someone else thought it would be a good idea. Take the Haast Pass, for example. The road follows the route explored by well-known geologist Julius von Haast, who led an expedition to find a route from the South Island’s east coast to the west coast. So, in typical European fashion, they named the pass after him, never mind the fact that local Māori had known of a trail through the pass for many years, using it as a hunting and gathering route to access the West Coast!
Nevertheless, this was the route I was travelling as the mist turned to rain, the rain to snow, and the snow to thick snow that brought vehicles to a halt. Such are the joys of motoring in Aotearoa.
Daily Photo: Christ Church in Kororāreka / Russell
Am I alone in thinking that a church with bullet holes that are more than 180 years old is worth knowing a little more about?
The church was at the centre of the conflict between Māori and the British Army that became known as the Battle of Kororāreka. The story has a long beginning, but for our purposes, we’ll go back to the years surrounding the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. Following the signing, a number of Māori felt the treaty was not being honoured. Among them was Ngāpuhi chief Hōne Heke, who had gifted the British Crown a flagpole at Kororāreka. He later cut it down in protest.
The pole was re-erected, only for Heke to cut it down again, making his displeasure with British actions fairly difficult to miss. The fourth attack came at night on 11 March 1845. Despite the flagpole being guarded by British soldiers, Heke and his warriors managed to take the hill and cut it down once again. Preceding this, fighting had broken out, at the far end of the town. It was a strategic move, drawing British forces away from the hill and the flag. The Battle of Kororāreka had begun.
The attack on the town drew the British forces away from the flagpole, allowing Heke to advance on the British flag. The fighting almost destroyed Kororāreka and marked the beginning of what became known as the Northern Wars. Caught in the middle was the church, which still carries the scars of those days.
Today, it is New Zealand’s oldest surviving church. Its graveyard contains the graves of important Māori leaders, including Tāmati Wāka Nene and Hannah King, along with many other names woven into New Zealand’s history. There are also the graves of men from HMS Hazard who died during the battle in March 1845.
It’s all very interesting really because if you look closely at the church walls, you can still see some of the bullet holes left behind.
By the time I arrived in St Bathans, the temperature had climbed to a positively tropical three degrees, although thanks to the heavy snow that had fallen several days earlier, it still felt like the sort of day where a thick pair of socks was an essential item of clothing. The tiny gold-mining settlement was only just coming to life and while it wasn’t completely deserted, it’s quietness wasn’t particularly surprising. St Bathans has a main street of roughly 500 metres, a handful of historic buildings and the general atmosphere of a place that has never been particularly interested in keeping up with the modern world.
At the centre of it all is the Vulcan Hotel, a building that looks as though it’s been sitting there quietly watching Central Otago change around it. It is also reputed to have a resident who has been around for considerably longer than most of the current guests. Her name is Rosie, and apparently she is a ghost.
The story most commonly told is that Rosie was a young prostitute who was murdered in Room 1 of the hotel for her small amount of gold in the 1880s, supposedly by a client. Her ghost is said to haunt Room 1, where guests have reported seeing her, feeling her presence or experiencing the sort of unexplained disturbances that are particularly easy to explain, except for the fact that you’re staying in a 19th-century hotel in the middle of nowhere. There is, however, a slight problem with the story. There doesn’t appear to be any contemporary newspaper report of a woman being murdered at St Bathans in the 1880s.
There is an even more awkward historical detail. The famous building known as the Vulcan Hotel wasn’t actually the Vulcan Hotel in the 1880s. It was the Ballarat Hotel. The original Vulcan was a different building altogether and was destroyed by fire in 1931, after which the Ballarat became the hotel we know today. So Rosie, if she really was murdered there, was technically murdered in the Ballarat Hotel, which makes the whole thing rather harder to put neatly on a tourist brochure and kind of spoils the Room 1 story.
However, there is another version of the story, one that is considerably more elaborate. It all starts with an anonymous, hand-sewn booklet called The Tragic Tale of the Vulcan Ghost, by a Lady who tells the story of a woman named Rosie O’Dowd. Rosie supposedly came from an impoverished family and began working at the hotel when she was only twelve years old. The years passed and she eventually fell in love with a wealthy traveller named Piers Osmond, who regularly stayed in Room 1. Osmond gave Rosie a snow globe, got her pregnant and then disappeared, which seems a particularly efficient way of destroying someone’s life.
Rosie then lost her baby during childbirth and, overcome by grief, apparently went mad outside Room 1 before disappearing, never to be seen or heard from again, well in living form at least. Her body was never found, but her spirit supposedly returned, leaving the Vulcan with at least one permanent resident.
It is a wonderful story, but there is very little evidence to suggest that Rosie O’Dowd or Piers Osmond actually existed. There are no obvious historical records confirming the romance, the pregnancy, the snow globe or Rosie’s disappearance. In fact, there are several different versions of Rosie’s story, with different names, different occupations and different accounts of how she died. The more you look, the more the historical Rosie seems to dissolve into folklore.
But standing outside the Vulcan in a tiny settlement at the end of a long Central Otago road, I found that I didn’t really care. St Bathans is full of stories from its gold-mining past, and Rosie is simply another one that has survived because people like having a ghost attached to an old hotel. The miners have gone, the goldfields have disappeared beneath the tussock and the streets are now so quiet that you can stand in the middle of them without having to worry about traffic.
Whether Rosie O’Dowd ever walked into Room 1, whether Piers Osmond ever stayed there, or whether a snow globe ever sat on its bedside table is impossible to say. But somewhere along the way, somebody gave the Vulcan Hotel a ghost, gave her a name and gave her a rather tragic story. And now, more than a century later, Rosie remains in St Bathans, haunting the local hotel.
Which, for a ghost, is probably about as Central Otago as you can get.
As far as man-made lakes go, the Blue Lake at St Bathans is small but impressive, thanks to its striking colour. That’s due to the natural drainage from the surrounding hills filling the lake and mixing with all the leftover bright white quartz sediments, which reflect sunlight back through the clear, mineralised water, resulting in a stunning bluish-green colour.
It all started back in around 1863, when the search for gold brought miners to the area, which was known at the time as Dunstan Creek. Now called St Bathans, a bustling town of more than 2,000 people quickly grew.
One of the main ways to search for gold in the area was by sluicing, where powerful jets of water were blasted at banks of earth, washing gravel into sluice boxes. The boxes then trapped the gold at the bottom. In St Bathans, this method was so popular that the nearby Kildare Hill was transformed into a 168-metre-deep pit. It was only when the pit started getting too close to the town that mining was halted in 1934. Once mining stopped, the huge hole filled with water, creating the beautiful blue lake that we see today.
Leaving Kokonga, or what I could see of it, I continued along Highway 87 as paddocks, sheds, farm buildings, hay bales and livestock came and went in the white, misty gloom. A short time later, I arrived in Kyeburn to find that things weren’t much better. However, as I headed towards Ranfurly, the skies gradually cleared, revealing a crisp, cloudless blue sky. A heavy blanket of fresh winter snow covered the rolling high-country hills, while dark tyre tracks cut through the fields, where wire fences stretched into the distance past scattered livestock braving the chill. All of this was backdropped by the majestic, snow-clad Hawkdun Ranges rising sharply against the horizon, the scene captured the serene, rugged beauty of a classic South Island landscape.
On occasions, there are moments that give you a real understanding of just what elevation can mean, and my arrival in Kokonga, in the Maniototo Basin, was one of them. I’d been travelling for some time through the Strath Taieri and, thanks to a recent snowfall, the surrounding hills were covered in crisp, white snow. However, with the area mostly sitting in a broad, flat valley framed by the Rock and Pillar Range, the snowline could be clearly seen on the surrounding hills, leaving the valley itself clear and cool on a typical winter’s day.
Kokonga, on the other hand, sits on the edge of the Maniototo and Strath Taieri basins, and thanks to a short climb in elevation, the transformation was quite remarkable. The clear roads and surrounding farmland had been replaced by a patchwork of white, disappearing into the mist beyond.
I’d spent the evening dining on pizza and beer and, when at last it was time to depart, I settled the bill and went in search of a bus! Not more than a few minutes later, I spotted my means of transportation disappearing into the distance. I took this as a sign from the Universe, and one that must be followed immediately! So, I went back to the establishment I had just departed from, ordered another beer, and decided to study the bus timetable a little more carefully!
The first morning I was in Akaroa, I called into the farmers’ market and took the opportunity to have a slow wander around the various stalls. After poking my nose around for a while, I stopped at a food truck called Zed’s Shed and ordered a bacon butty for brunch before setting off in search of caffeine.
One of the good things about Akaroa is that the township is wonderfully suited to walking. Spread across several bays, you can happily spend your time aimlessly drifting in and out of shops, rummaging through shelves, or doing what I did: sit on a park bench while dripping grease and coffee down the front of my shirt, making it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I really shouldn’t be allowed to eat in public without a bib.
There’s something deeply humbling, and slightly alarming, about rounding a bend to find a geological titan swallowing the horizon. Spread out before me was the Rock and Pillar Range, vast and imposing in a humble sort of way. The range didn’t peak in the sharp, dramatic fashion of the Southern Alps. Instead, it rose in a massive, undulating wall, with deep, icy gullies that looked from a distance like the face of a wrinkled old man, showing the weariness of time. Below this blanket of winter, the lower foothills rested in a desolate expanse of dry tussock, with weather-beaten rock formations littering the ground in every direction.
The contrast was striking. A clear blue sky above a frozen mountain range, and a prehistoric plain at my feet. I pulled the car over at a signposted rest stop, mesmerised by the sheer, unbothered scale of it all. Time seemed to stand still, frozen like the surrounding landscape.
Daily Photo – Auckland’s Te Komititanga Square & Ferry Building
There’s something exhilaratingly miserable about exploring an unfamiliar city in a downpour. I stood in the centre of Auckland’s Te Komititanga Square, water cascading off the brim of my hat in a steady, miniature waterfall, watching the locals navigate the deluge with that effortless dignity only locals seem to possess. They didn’t run so much as simply glide beneath enormous, structurally sound umbrellas, looking as though they were modelling rainwear from a high-end catalogue.
I, meanwhile, was completely soaked. An earlier decision not to bring a jacket was coming back to haunt me. My vest had surrendered twenty minutes earlier, absorbing water like an oversized sponge, and my left shoe had developed a rhythmic squelch that sounded like the death throes of a dying amphibian. The tiles and neatly laid walkways, which I’m sure are beautifully picturesque in the midday sun, had transformed into a treacherous obstacle course covered by a slick film of pooling water.
I took three cautious steps, immediately lost my footing, and performed a brief, frantic tap dance to avoid both my camera and my skull cracking open in the middle of one of Auckland’s most public places. With a desperate flailing of my arms as the rain pelted down, I somehow managed to retain my equilibrium and assured the onlookers that I’d been doing my own stunts for years now.
It was at that point I came to the conclusion that it was time to abandon the square and head for the dry sanctuary of a nearby covered arcade.
“It used to shock me, even at that age, to see old ladies singing in the streets, and soldiers returned from World War One selling matches in the gutter to survive. This made me realise I had to do my best to do away with all this sort of thing. That is where it all began.” – The Rev Canon Douglas Caswell
Daily Photo – The Chapel of Christ the King
On my second morning in Auckland, as I watched the rain blow sideways, I remembered I’d made a promise to myself to visit a place called Selwyn Village. I stared at the deluge, finished my coffee, and pulled out my phone to consult the Auckland bus timetable. It was immediately apparent that this was going to require multiple bus changes and a heroic amount of patience.
The village was the vision of Auckland City Missioner Reverend Douglas Caswell, who is, among other things, my grandfather. When the village officially opened in 1954, it transformed retirement care for the elderly by creating a compassionate, self-contained community for vulnerable seniors. The last time I was there was at least twenty years ago and, despite the rain, I was keen to reconnect a few dots in my memory and see what had changed.
Arriving, I stepped off the bus into puddles and took a moment to reorient myself. The buildings I was used to seeing, including those my grandmother once called home, were gone, replaced by something more modern and less 1950s-ish. My main focus, however, was the village chapel, where a memorial to my grandfather stands. I made a dash through the rain and, after shaking myself off like a shaggy dog, was greeted warmly by two village chaplains, who also happened to be two of the nicest people I’ve ever met. We chatted for a while and they showed me around before apologising that they had to hurry off to conduct pastoral visits in the nearby apartments.
For the next hour, I read through information about my grandfather and his vision for a better kind of care for the elderly. I read about my grandparents’ determined fundraising efforts, studied original chapel designs from more than sixty-five years ago, sat where my grandmother would sit at every service (as would we on visits), and briefly wandered the gardens between showers, admiring the Caswell Memorial Light dedicated to my grandfather.
Eventually the bus appeared and I stepped aboard, wondering why memories of grandparents remain such prized treasures in our hearts. With that, the bus rattled off into the pouring rain.
There is a particular kind of optimism that belongs to the early settlers. They arrived at the bottom of the world, stared up at a mountain range that appeared designed specifically to prevent travel, and decided there must be a way through. They ventured into unmapped country searching for gold, launch small wooden boats into rivers no one has successfully navigated before, disappeared underground into cave systems simply to discover where they lead, or stood on a wild and exposed coastline facing the Pacific Ocean and think, yes, this seems like a perfectly reasonable place to build a settlement.
At some point in the nineteenth century, somebody looked at the stretch of coast that would become St Clair and came to exactly that conclusion. The difficulty was that nature had plans of its own. Standing on the Esplanade today, watching surfers drift beyond the breakers and families wander along the promenade with coffees in hand, it’s difficult to imagine the coastline as anything other than permanent. Yet for much of its history, St Clair was engaged in a long and often unequal struggle with the sea. The ocean would advance, people would respond, and then the ocean would advance again.
The first attempts to hold the coastline were charmingly optimistic. Timber walls were built, only to be destroyed. Stone walls followed and met much the same fate – in one case, a substantial wall survived for little more than two years before being swallowed by the sea. Another replacement was constructed at considerable expense and promptly suffered a similar fate and by 1890, after years of effort and expenditure, much of what remained was little more than wreckage scattered along the western end of the beach.
This was not simply bad luck. Geography was partly to blame. The shape of St Clair Point creates a complicated and often destructive wave environment. Storms arriving from the south-east are concentrated and redirected in ways that can be remarkably unforgiving. When the protective walls failed, the sea did not merely reclaim a strip of sand. Water pushed inland and contributed to a series of major floods that spread across South Dunedin. To residents living there at the time, the beach was not a recreational asset, it was a very real threat.
Eventually, around the beginning of the twentieth century, a different approach emerged. Instead of attempting to stop the ocean outright, engineers began looking for ways to work with the natural movement of sand along the coast. Their solution was the construction of groynes, heavy timber structures extending out into the surf. The idea was simple enough: trap sand moving along the shoreline and allow the beach to build itself naturally. For a time, the plan worked remarkably well. The beach widened. Sand accumulated. The coastline appeared more stable yet anyone familiar with the sea knows that victories are often temporary. Severe storms returned in the years before the First World War and reminded everyone that the ocean had not surrendered. The response was the construction of the concrete seawall that still forms the backbone of the Esplanade today, together with a new generation of timber groynes built from hardy woods including kauri, tōtara and Australian blue gum.
One of those structures would eventually become something rather unexpected. When it was first built, nobody would have imagined it becoming a local icon. It was simply infrastructure. A practical solution to a practical problem. Yet over the decades the groynes became woven into the visual identity of St Clair. They appeared in family photographs, postcards and later in countless social media posts. Generations grew up with them standing out in the surf, as familiar a part of the beach as the seawall itself.
Following reconstruction work in the 1950s, the groynes helped create what many remember as the golden years of St Clair Beach. Through the 1960s, 1970s and much of the 1980s, wide stretches of sand extended across the shoreline. For many Dunedin residents, this became the St Clair they knew best. Summer days seemed endless, and the beach appeared fixed and unchanging. Of course, coastlines rarely remain fixed for long. The sea is patient. Decades passed. Timber weathered. Marine borers tunnelled through hardwood piles. Winter storms loosened planks and broke supports. Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the structures began to disappear. What had once been substantial coastal defences were reduced to weathered remnants protruding from the water. By the early 2020s, only a handful of poles remained until eventually there was one.
For a surprisingly long period, a solitary timber post stood isolated in the surf. It was no longer performing any meaningful engineering function. It simply existed, stubbornly resisting the waves that had spent more than a century dismantling everything around it. There was something strangely moving about that final survivor. It had become less a piece of infrastructure and more a monument to persistence, both human and natural.
When it finally vanished beneath the waves in July 2022, it felt like the closing line of a much longer story.
The good old 1960s beachside Kiwi dairy. You could walk in with a crisp $1 note from your parents and purchase both a single-scoop ice cream and a hot mince pie for 10 cents each. You could add a Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bar for 5 cents, while a large raspberry milkshake whipped up in a metal tin would cost 15 cents. A scoop of hot chips wrapped tightly in newspaper would be another 10 cents, a standard loaf of Tip Top bread for making chip sandwiches would set you back a further 11 cents, and a packet of 20 Rothmans for the parents would cost 33 cents, bringing your total bill to 94 cents. You could still walk out with 6 cents of loose change in your pocket, provided you didn’t spend it on lollies.
The Kiwi beachside dairy served as the ultimate hub of the New Zealand summer. Following the chaotic transition to decimal currency in 1967, dairy counters became battlegrounds as fierce, sunburnt 10-year-olds aggressively argued the mathematical fairness of their lolly conversions with confused shopkeepers. This chaos was matched outdoors by the legendary “hot asphalt dash”, a frantic, high-kicking sprint across melting tarmac by barefoot kids desperate to reach the cool refuge of the shop’s chequered linoleum floor. Then there was the chest freezer, where children attempted to hide stolen frozen treats down their woollen swimming togs, only to be instantly given away when the ice pressed against their skin. Finally, nothing tested an owner’s patience quite like the agonisingly slow lolly selection, which saw sandy-fingered children spending twenty minutes debating how to spend a single 5-cent coin while an increasingly frustrated queue waited behind them.
Daily Photo – Panorama of Queen Street in Auckland
This is a nine-shot panorama of Queen Street in Auckland that I took while I was there. I was travelling light and without a tripod, so I simply made do and produced it handheld, which presented its own challenges. Not long after this, I came across a man playing an Erhu. I thought he was rather good and that he added a subtly different atmosphere to the area, which wasn’t nearly as busy as I’d expected. However, clearly I was in the minority, as his case was almost devoid of money. I then detoured along Victoria Street, where all I saw of the Sky Tower was it disappearing into a thick, heavy mist, before ducking into Father Ted’s Original Irish Pub on Wellesley Street for a pint or three.
Daily Photo – The HMS Britomart Monument at Green’s Point
If you find yourself wandering around Akaroa, it won’t be long before you come across Green’s Point. It’s a pleasant enough spot overlooking the harbour, but there’s something there that hints at just how differently New Zealand’s history might have unfolded. Standing in the grass is the Britomart Monument, a simple stone memorial marking an event that was decided by little more than timing.
In August 1840, Akaroa Harbour became the focus of an international race. The French had plans to establish a settlement here, and a group of colonists was already making its way across the Pacific. The British, however, had learned of those intentions and were determined not to lose control of the South Island before they had properly secured it. To make sure that didn’t happen, Lieutenant-Governor William Hobson dispatched HMS Britomart south from the Bay of Islands. The vessel arrived in Akaroa Harbour on 10 August 1840, and Captain Owen Stanley wasted little time. British officials were landed, a court session was convened, and the necessary legal formalities were carried out to demonstrate British authority. Most importantly, the Union Jack was raised.
Five days later the French warship L’Aube arrived carrying Captain Charles François Lavaud and the first organised group of French settlers. By then, however, the British had already made their move. The flag was flying, the paperwork was complete, and the South Island had effectively been claimed. The French settlers stayed regardless, helping to shape the unique character that still sets Akaroa apart today. French street names remain, French influence can be found throughout the town, and it is difficult to walk very far without being reminded of that heritage.
Standing beside the monument today, it is hard not to reflect on how narrow the margin really was. Five days is hardly any time at all. Had the Britomart encountered rough weather, suffered delays, or simply arrived a little later, New Zealand’s story might have taken a very different turn. History often feels inevitable when viewed from a distance, yet here on Green’s Point it becomes clear that sometimes it hinges on something as simple as who arrives first.
With only a few days left of autumn before the winter months roll in, here’s one last seasonal image for you. Just in case you’re not tired of leaves drifting softly, time moving like the wind, and the quiet shift of the seasons.
On my last full day in Akaroa I went to Takapuneke Reserve, located on the hillside at the eastern end of the town. I’d read that it had been identified as a site of national significance and, where once it was the location of a bloody massacre in the 1830s, it has since been declared tapu and is being transformed into a place of healing and learning through a partnership between Ōnuku Rūnanga and Christchurch City Council.
I arrived on an overcast day with a cool breeze drifting up from the bay. Looking around, I had the place to myself, along with its quietly sculptural landscape and walking trails. It was all extremely peaceful, with a backdrop that couldn’t help but put you into a calm, serene mood.
I stood looking out across the surroundings and admired how pleasant and well thought out the whole place seemed. Certainly a far cry from the scenes that graced the hillside in 1830, when smoke, gunfire, and violence tore through Takapuneke in an event that would leave deep scars on both the land and the history of Aotearoa.
The other day I saw a photo taken somewhere in the Viaduct Harbour. It was fine, sunny, and filled with people happily strolling around, visiting a few of the nearby bars and restaurants in the afternoon sunshine. In fact, it was the exact opposite of when I was there. From my vantage point on the Eastern Viaduct near the corner of Lower Hobson Street and Quay Street, the rain bounced off the pavement while the wind swirled between the surrounding buildings, driving it at odd and unexpected angles. Looking back across the Viaduct Harbour, then towards where the city should have been, now replaced by a thick, heavy white mist, I contemplated my surroundings and couldn’t help thinking that perhaps this was a more accurate introduction to Auckland than the polished waterfront scenes that appear in tourism campaigns. The harbour was rough, the wind unpleasant, and the city itself had vanished completely into cloud, yet there was still something strangely captivating about it all.
Every so often it’s possible to come across a strange, slightly unexpected bit of historical awkwardness, and Takamatua Bay is one of them. Originally known as German Bay, it was a by-product of early colonial ambition and something we can thank the French for.
Back in the 1840s, the French became enthusiastic about colonising the South Island, and their sights were fixed on Banks Peninsula and a port called Akaroa. A French company had grand plans to establish a proper French settlement and, to make it viable, they needed people – anyone willing to risk sailing to the far side of the world and starting again. At the time, Germany was a politically unstable patchwork of small states where people were facing economic hardship. So, when the chance came to emigrate to Banks Peninsula, a few German families happily signed on.
When they reached Akaroa Harbour, land was allocated around the bays, and the German colonists settled in small numbers, farming, fishing, and setting about carving out a living on steep, bush-covered land that looked out over what became known as German Bay. In those dusty, pre-war years, the locals were perfectly content with the name, a nod to the handful of Teutonic families who had settled there and were, by all accounts, quite well behaved. It was a sensible, if unimaginative name that served everyone well until 1914, when the world decided to go collectively mad.
Suddenly, having a “German” anything in the neighbourhood was about as socially desirable as a case of the mumps. By 1916, gripped by a sudden (and conveniently timed) burst of patriotic fervour, the authorities decided that the name had to go. In a fit of enthusiasm, they quietly dusted off the original name, Takamatua Bay. It was a classic piece of historical rebranding while Europe’s map was being redrawn in blood and mud on the battlefields of the First World War.
Before we leave the charm of Arrowtown, a place whose very existence feels almost like a fable, let us visit Buckingham Street and the historic row of gold miners’ cottages. In the early years of the gold rush, most European miners were not living comfortably in neat wooden cottages; many were in tents, rough shacks, or whatever shelter they could throw together.
These tidy weatherboard cottages seen in Arrowtown today often appeared slightly later, once the town stabilised and miners and business owners had made enough money to build something more permanent. So, it’s tempting to picture European miners settling into solid wooden cottages while Chinese miners made do with rough stone huts exposed to the elements by a creek, but the truth is a bit messier. Most miners started out rough, but over time built more permanent structures like the ones lining Buckingham Street, using milled timber and corrugated iron, materials that were more expensive and durable. The Chinese miners, arriving later and working the leftovers, rarely had that same chance. The contrast between the two styles of housing tells a significant story about the social and economic divisions of the 1860s and 70s Otago gold rush.
And with that sobering thought, I left the autumnal flow of beauty announcing itself loudly across the Arrowtown basin, heading for State Highway 6, which would take me past the Nevis Bluff, through the Kawarau Gorge, and on to Cromwell, Lake Dunstan, and the sedate town of Alexandra.
I was having what I was calling an ‘Aramoana day’. It wasn’t nearly as special or spectacular as it sounded. Quite simply, it involved driving out to the small coastal settlement on the northern side of Otago Harbour and stopping wherever I liked.
Since Aramoana is a good 30-minute drive along a narrow, winding harbour-side road, it gave me plenty of opportunities to pull over and waste away a good portion of the morning, and much of the afternoon, looking at whatever took my fancy. And that’s exactly what I did.
Which is how I came to be standing on the Aramoana Boardwalk, watching the world go by, and the occasional ship.
Recently I spent some time in Auckland, where apart from a period of about three hours on a Wednesday night when the weather momentarily cleared, all I saw of the Sky Tower was it disappearing into a thick, heavy mist while rain pelted down onto the city below. During that three hour period when the weather cleared, I ventured out on the streets and took this photo while the Sky Tower was visible. The thing was, the view I wanted was in the middle of the street meaning I had to cross the road, stop to take a photo and get back to the footpath before the lights turned.
There’s a specific kind of quiet you only find in the narrow gaps between old brick buildings at five in the morning. It’s a heavy, expectant sort of silence, as if the walls are holding their breath, waiting for the city to wake up and start making demands again.
I stumbled into this little pocket of Dunedin while wandering near Crawford Street, my camera tripod clattering far too loudly on the asphalt for such a peaceful hour. On the left-hand wall, a painted white hand reaches out from the bricks, frozen in a permanent, hopeful gesture. Reaching out for a handshake that isn’t coming, or perhaps just desperately searching for a passing flat white.
At the end of the alley, a single, brilliant light crowns the rooftop of the building beyond, cutting through the deep, bruised-blue of the pre-dawn sky. Above, the clouds streak by as if they are in a hurry to get somewhere, while down here, everything is still. It’s just me, the cold pipes, and the heavy weight of local history resting in the mortar. It’s beautiful, it’s moody, and it is definitely time for breakfast.
At about 5:30 in the morning, Dunedin feels like it belongs to someone else. The usual daytime hustle has slipped quietly away, leaving behind a version of the city that is calmer, softer, and just a little bit mysterious.
Standing on Crawford Street, I found myself with the place almost entirely to myself, only the occasional car slipping through the darkness. If I’m being completely honest, I was functioning without a morning injection of black coffee into my system and wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing up. It had seemed like a brilliant idea the previous evening, photographing the city before the sun claimed it but now, standing in the chill, my brain was struggling to string together a coherent thought.
The streetlights were still very much in charge, casting bright starbursts across the road as if they were quite reluctant to hand over the shift to the sun. Their reflections shimmered on the damp asphalt, while the long red streaks of passing headlights briefly stitched movement into an otherwise still scene. It had that faint, peculiar feel you only get at this hour as though the night had gathered a cast of unseen characters and quietly sent them on their way just moments before I arrived.
There was no sign of them now, of course, but you could almost imagine they had been here, lingering in doorways or drifting along the kerb in that unspoken way cities sometimes encourage. The buildings stood watch like patient witnesses, holding onto stories they clearly had no intention of sharing with a sleepy photographer.
At this hour, without the noise and distraction, you start to notice the small details, the shapes, the textures, and the spaces between things. Even the air feels different; it’s cooler, carrying that faint, salty promise of a warm January day still waiting somewhere beyond the horizon. Now, if I could just find a barista who’s started their shift, everything would be just about perfect.
The valley opened out in front of me with wide, open spaces filled with nothing but pale tussock, each clump standing like a small island in a sea of dry grass. They stretched away in every direction, shaped by long Otago summer and a few decades of wind. Ahead, the land rolled upward in soft folds before rising sharply into the distant ridgeline of the Hawkdun Range. Up there the brown hills gave way to streaks of lingering snow, clinging stubbornly to higher gullies and shaded slopes. From where I stood the snow looked almost painted on, white lines cutting across the dark ridges like careless brushstrokes.
Heavy grey clouds hung low over the mountains, threatening rain, while a narrow band of blue held its ground above the ridge. Every now and then sunlight slipped through a gap and wandered briefly across the hills before disappearing once more.
I walked on for a while, partly because it felt good to move and partly because the valley had a an intriguing quality that’s hard to explain. The walk was refreshing, enjoyable as the mountain range loomed larger and larger the closer I got. It was somewhere around this point that a small but undeniable flaw in my plan became apparent. At some point I’d need to walk back!
I turned and looked behind me. The road ran all the way back across the valley floor toward Blackstone Cemetery, where my car was parked beside the gate. I began the slow trudge back to my car, some five kilometres away.
I’d spent the best part of three days wandering around the Ida Valley in Central Otago, drifting between the small towns of Omakau and Ophir, and up into the hills around Poolburn. By the fourth morning, I found myself at Blackstone Cemetery, wandering among the old graves and a nearby abandoned schoolhouse that appeared to have closed its doors to the world some time ago.
The night before, I had stopped at the local pub in Oturehua for dinner and a quiet pint. What followed was a thoroughly educational evening spent talking to the locals about the weather, the railway that used to run through the valley, sheep, and several finer points of farming that I almost certainly misunderstood. The beers arrived with alarming efficiency, and by the time I eventually stepped outside, my legs had developed a curious independence from the rest of my body.
Now, having showered, eaten, and injected several litres of caffeine into my system, I was beginning to feel almost human. I decided a walk might improve matters further.
Earlier, I had spotted a line on the map called Home Hills Runs Road, which seemed to strike a perfectly straight path toward the distant ridges of the Hawkdun Range. It looked short enough to manage without a total physical collapse, so I left the car by the cemetery gate and set off.
The road stretched ahead through endless tussock. There were no houses and no traffic. There was only the rhythmic crunch of gravel underfoot and a zephyr wind sliding across the floor of the valley.
If you manage to make it through Invercargill, you’re rewarded with Bluff. A place that doesn’t try to be more than it is, a small town at the southern tip of the South Island. It’s known for its oysters, a signpost, and being the gateway to Stewart Island by ferry. It’s exposed to the elements, has some decent street art, and a tasty food truck you can usually find parked on Gore Street.
This is the place that has watched ships come and go for well over a century through its harbour. It sits staring across the often moody waters of Foveaux Strait, where the wind seems to arrive with purpose and rarely leaves quietly. A place where fishermen keep odd hours and tell even odder stories, and where it has long been a meeting point for sailors, fishermen, and travellers heading further south.
The day began in earnest at Waiouru, a place that exists primarily to prove that if you give the military enough tussock and a sufficiently biting wind, they will stay there forever out of sheer stubbornness. Leaving Waiouru is less of a departure and more of an escape from a landscape that looks like the moon, if the moon were owned by the Ministry of Defence and featured a surprising number of tanks.
The drive south toward Palmerston North is one of those quintessential New Zealand experiences where the scenery does all the heavy lifting while you sit there wondering if you remembered to turn off the heater in the motel. You descend from the volcanic plateau, the mountains retreating into a haze of grey and white, replaced by hills so green they look as if they have been colour-graded by an over-enthusiastic artist.
Eventually the hills flatten out entirely, as if the land just gave up trying to be dramatic. This is the Manawatū. I rolled into Palmerston North, or “Palmy” to the locals, a nickname that suggests a tropical vibe the city does not quite possess, despite how hard it tries.
Navigating Palmerston North is a unique exercise in geometry. It is a city built by someone who owned a very long ruler and had an unwavering faith in right angles. I drove around for a bit, which is to say I navigated a series of wide streets that all seemed to lead to the same place. I found my motel and, after checking in and performing the mandatory inspection of the tea and coffee facilities (two packets of UHT milk and a single lonely biscuit), I set out for a walk.
The heart of the city is The Square. It is not just a square. It is a sprawling seven-hectare park that the city was built around, as if the early settlers arrived, saw a very nice patch of grass, and decided that was good enough. There is a large plaza at one end, while the other features the usual arrangement of shops you might expect to find in a city centre.
The Square itself was vast, with small pockets of people scattered around enjoying the warm, sunny day. For a long time I could not work out what it was that felt slightly odd about the place. Then it struck me. That was exactly the problem. It was large and open, but there simply was not anyone there. In a larger city it would be filled with people, but here in Palmerston North it almost seemed too big, as if no one was entirely sure what to use it for.
As evening crept in around the edges of the city, my stomach began to rumble. I wandered past various establishments until I stumbled upon a Thai restaurant. There is a universal law that states the quality of a Thai restaurant can be judged by the flamboyance of its décor. This place was modest, but it smelled heavenly of lemongrass and ambition. I ordered a green curry that was spicy enough to make my ears ring, but delicious enough that I did not care.
The night concluded in a local bar. I ordered a beer and sat in a corner, nursing a couple of pints and observing the locals. There were students from the university debating things with the intensity of people who have not yet had to pay a mortgage, and older men who looked as if they had been sitting in those exact chairs since the mid-seventies.
By the time I walked back to the motel, the city had settled into a profound provincial silence. The air was cool, the streets were empty, and the ginger nut biscuit was waiting for me.
All things considered, it had been a very good day.
The other day I was involved in a discussion about Southland towns. Gore was mentioned, as was Owaka, Curio Bay, Hedgehope, Mataura and Riverton. The community of Riverton entered the conversation, as did Gemstone Beach, Tuatapere, Nightcaps, Winton, Dipton and Colac Bay. However, there was one place we simply couldn’t remember.
As children, it had been described as the place where, “blink and you’ll miss it.” We knew it had a bowling club, a pub and a few residents, and that was about it. We knew it was something of a ghost town, a shell of what it once was, and that the name began with an “O”. We also knew it was somewhere near Te Waewae Bay. After several minutes of going back and forth, and round and round around in circles, we gave in and referred to Google Maps.
Daily Photo – A View of the Sky Tower You Don’t See on Postcards
If you google “Auckland’s Sky Tower,” you’ll most likely be shown images of the city’s skyline at night, with the tower brilliantly lit in a kaleidoscope of colours, standing like a beacon above the harbour, its lights reflected in the water below.
Alternatively, it can be seen as a gleaming spire piercing the night sky, wrapped in ever-changing lights like a giant neon candle over Auckland, turning the city into a miniature Christmas village on a summer evening while its colours dance across the harbour.
Well, I hate to be the one to burst your bubble, but I’m here to tell you that isn’t always the case. The last time I was in Auckland, apart from a period of about three hours on a Wednesday night when the weather momentarily cleared, all I saw of the Sky Tower was it disappearing into a thick, heavy mist while rain pelted down onto the city below. For three days, all I saw was a grey shaft vanishing into a white nothingness. Still, it provided an alternative view of the Sky Tower, one the Auckland tourism board probably doesn’t rush to put on postcards.
