Daily Photo – Marinoto

The story of Marinoto begins in 1878 with a vision so grand that even the budget couldn’t keep up. Commissioned by part-time engineer and part-time entrepreneur John McGregor, the house was built from solid Port Chalmers bluestone and finished with pale Oamaru stone. Well, the part that was finished, anyway. After completing the exterior and the ground floor, McGregor ran out of funds and the house sat half-done for the next few years, quietly waiting for its next chapter.

That arrived in the form of Arthur William Morris. A director of the Union Steamship Company, he stepped in at a mortgagee sale and took over the property. By 1883, the first floor was complete and he named the house Marinoto, a word thought to mean calm or peace. It was an impressive home by any measure with fourteen main rooms, a grand foyer, coal-fired central heating, electric lights powered by its own generator, formal gardens, and even a tennis court.

Then came 1903 and the Sargood era, which turned Marinoto into its most glamorous version of itself. Under Sir Percy Sargood, the house became a lively hub of Dunedin society, the sort of place where you almost expected a brass band to strike up the moment you stepped through the door. The Sargoods hosted balls that spilled onto the wide lawns and garden parties that made full use of the thirteen acre estate. Guests wandered among the rose beds, paused beneath old trees, and did their best to look as though they were part of a grand period scene. Inside, a substantial staff kept everything running with the quiet precision of a well rehearsed performance, polishing silver, preparing feasts, and somehow ensuring no one was ever left with an empty glass or a spare moment. For a time, Marinoto truly became the place to be.

Daily Photo – The Steeple Of Dunedin’s Iconic First Church

If you stand outside First Church on a bright Dunedin day, it’s hard not to feel slightly dwarfed by the whole thing. The spire seems to poke at the sky in that confident way only nineteenth-century architects attempted, and you can almost hear the distant echo of someone saying, “Yes, this will do nicely.”

The story behind it begins with the Reverend Dr. Thomas Burns, who arrived here in 1848 aboard the Philip Laing with 239 determined Free Church settlers and what must have been a very firm sense of purpose. Burns, nephew of the poet and spiritual anchor of the new colony, found himself the sole minister for the entire settlement. It’s the sort of job description that would make most people carefully rethink, but Burns pressed on.

As Dunedin swelled during the Gold Rush, Burns became convinced the town needed a proper church. Not a modest wooden chapel, but something permanent and impressive. The only problem was Bell Hill, which loomed inconveniently in the way. The solution was simple in theory and maddening in practice: carve the hill down until the ideal building site emerged. It took the better part of a decade, and Burns kept a close watch throughout, making sure the dream didn’t drift.

In 1862, architect Robert Lawson won the design competition, offering up a Gothic Revival masterpiece that looks as though it was dropped in from a much grander city. Burns was still very much the project’s champion and had the honour of laying the foundation stone on 15 May 1868. Sadly, he died in early 1871, two years before the church was finally opened on 23 November 1873.

He never saw the Oamaru stone finished or worshipped beneath the soaring interior, but you feel his presence all the same. First Church may be a place of faith, but it’s equally a monument to one man’s persistence, vision, and refusal to accept that a hill – even a big one – should stand in the way of something remarkable.

Daily Photo – Juvenile Fin Whale at Otago Musuem

I headed for the Otago Museum because it had started to rain and wandering around a Museum seemed just the thing for a lazy Saturday afternoon. In the main foyer of the Museum is a cafe called Precinct. It was busy and doing a brisk trade of coffee, hot chocolates and all manner of food orders that hungry customers were happily tucking into. I passed them by and headed up the staircase to the top floor of the museum which is labeled the Animal Attic – a room that contains some 3,000 historical specimens, with a mix of taxidermied animals, pinned insects, and preserved specimens. Tucked away in this room, in a small jar, is the single greatest thing on display in the entire museum – that being ‘The Rat King’. 

A Rat King is formed when the tails of a group of rats become tied together in a way so they can’t escape. Usually the tails are knotted and entangled with straw, hay, hair or other material found close to their nests. The largest Rat King ever discovered was in May 1828 when a miller in Buchheim, Germany, pulled apart the walls of his chimney and uncovered a mummified tangle of thirty-two rats. The animals were hairless, black with soot, and their tails had become tightly knotted together. The miller passed the strange find to the local natural history society and it eventually made its way to the Mauritianum Museum in Altenburg, where it is still kept on display to this day. The Rat King on display at Otago Museum isn’t quite as large as that, it is made up of only eight rats, but it’s very impressive none the less. It was donated to the museum in the 1930’s when the rats were found to have fallen from a nest that was located in a local shipping company shed and became tangled together with horse hair. 

The room one floor below the Animal Attic is called The Maritime Gallery which celebrates the seafaring stories of Otago. Pride of place is the skeleton of a 17 metre long juvenile fin whale which has been hanging peacefully from iron girders since 1883. Unusually for whale skeletons, this one has been kept in exceptional condition having been on display for more than 100 years and has an extremely colourful past. Originally it was found on the beach at the entrance to the Waimea River, Nelson, in 1882 by Captain William Jackson Barry. An ex-whaler who made a living from lecturing throughout New Zealand – he exhibited the skeleton at a store in Nelson, before touring the country with it.

In 1883 he sold it to the Otago Museum but before he did so, he did a rather strange and curious thing. While exhibiting the skeleton in a warehouse he hosted a number of invited groups to dine on a three course meal inside its ribcage. At the time of its acquisition by the museum, having a full whale skeleton was a big deal and suspending such an item in a historic building required some ingenious, out of the box thinking and quite a feat of engineering – where it has been fascinating people ever since.  

The thing that strikes you immediately about the specimen is the size – at 17 metres it isn’t even fully grown, adult fin whales can grow up to 27 to 30 metres in length. If nothing else, it shows you just how truly immense these creatures are and how vast the ocean must be. The thought is mind boggling! 

Daily Photo – New Zealand Centennial Commemorative Lookout

Back in the 1840s, when a group of Scots became disgruntled with life in their bonny wee part of the world, they did what any sane, rational human would do. They packed up all their worldly possessions, bundled them into a boat, and sailed 14,000 miles to begin a new life in a place they had never seen and probably could not have found on a map. Fortunately for them, a few of their English counterparts from down the road in London had recently signed a treaty with local indigenous chiefs at their intended destination. This at least gave the newcomers the sense that settling would be reasonably straightforward.

So, when the first of these settlers arrived on the shores of what would later become the city of Dunedin in 1848, they wasted no time in making everything look nice and homely. Over the years, from the trees and mudflats on the edge of their new home, a delightful wee town slowly rose with all the charm and industriousness you would expect from a determined group of Scots keen to recreate a slice of Scotland at the bottom of the world.

One hundred years later, keen to celebrate what a wonderful job their ancestors had done and to mark the centenary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, everyone agreed that a New Zealand Centennial Commemorative Lookout would be the perfect way to give the city a well-deserved pat on the back. Plans moved along swiftly and a local hill called Signal Hill was chosen as the site of the new landmark. Its height and commanding views over the Otago Harbour were obvious advantages. It was also accessible by road and already an important navigation and communication point, since a coal beacon signal station and flagstaff on its summit had long helped guide ships through the narrow harbour. It was, in all respects, an ideal location.

Needing an architect to complete the design, the job went to Henry McDowell Smith, somewhat of a celebrity in South Island architectural circles, he quickly got to work. The foundation stone was laid by the Mayor in February 1940 and the official inauguration followed in April. Unfortunately, things did not go smoothly after that. The entire project would not be finished for another fifteen years, a full decade later than planned. The main delay was caused by a certain German fellow with a small moustache who decided he would try to take over the world, starting with Europe. Understandably, this held things up for quite some time while the mess was being dealt with.

Things got back on track in the 1950s when progress finally picked up again. The site was completed and two bronze sculptures were commissioned to stand on either side of the monument. The entire project was finished in 1957. Today, residents have a commanding stone Centennial Memorial, flanked by impressive bronze figures, that offers spectacular panoramic views of Dunedin City and the Otago Harbour.