Daily Photo – Christmas in Dunedin

I was running an errand in the centre of town the other day when I wandered into the Octagon. There, proudly displayed in the lower Octagon, was a large Christmas tree. Now, I hate to sound critical, but the Dunedin City Council seems to have gone for the sparse look with the Christmas decorations in recent years. Throwing a 45-foot tree up in the middle of town and draping a bit of tinsel from a few lamp posts hardly inspires the Christmas spirit.

It’s not as if we’re expecting a dense, glittering display of thousands of blue, white, and red lights with a massive, brightly lit tree dominating every shop window beneath a starry sky. Take this photo for example: if you were to whisk the tree away, it could be any other sunny Saturday afternoon in Dunedin. What’s more, it’s the exact same tree as last year, and the year before that, and the year before that. They’ve had twelve months to come up with a plan, and the best they managed was shifting it slightly to the left! What’s next – getting rid of the New Year’s fireworks and replacing them with a disappointing light show? Oh wait, that was last year.

Daily Photo – Roaming the Streets of Port Chalmers

I spent a while roaming the streets of Port Chalmers, doing that aimless but satisfying kind of wandering where you look at buildings you’ve seen a hundred times and suddenly realise you’ve never really looked at them at all. One kept pulling me back like a magnet: the old Bank of New Zealand, sitting proudly on its corner as if still keeping a watchful eye over the wharf. The place has the sort of architecture that quietly announces the port was once a much bigger deal in the Dunedin story, even if the building, like a few of its neighbours, is now well past its glory days.

In more recent times it was owned by Ralph Hotere, who used it as his art studio, which feels wonderfully fitting. If a building with that sort of pedigree isn’t destined to become an art gallery, then honestly, serious questions need to be asked!

Daily Photo – Te Aka Ōtākou

I recently read (not that it’s new news!)that the shared pathway that snakes its way around the Otago Harbour from Portobello to Port Chalmers is called: “Te Aka Ōtākou” (The Otago Vine). It is a fitting title for a route that unwinds gracefully along the water’s edge and is well worth exploring. From certain angles the pathway looks like the spine of a taniwha, twisting its way from the place where the city of Dunedin now stands to the harbour mouth at Taiaroa Head.

In fact, a Māori legend tells of a great taniwha that once lived in the long harbour. As the story goes, this mighty creature carved the deep channel while thrashing its tail, creating the bends and curves we see today. The taniwha guarded the waters and the people who travelled across them, watching over the harbour until it finally came to rest at the entrance near Taiaroa Head. Some say the distinctive shape of the harbour still follows the line of its body, a reminder that the landscape carries the memory of the taniwha within it.

Daily Photo – Baldwin Street: Planned Genius or a Happy Accident?

There’s something deeply endearing about Dunedin’s Baldwin Street. It’s the sort of place that makes visitors stop halfway up, hands on knees, and wonder how on earth the world’s steepest street ended up in Dunedin and why a road was built at such an angle in the first place. It looks less like a street and more like town planners had been enjoying a particularly enthusiastic lunch when they drew the lines. The truth, though, is far less deliberate and far more charming. Baldwin Street wasn’t planned to be the steepest street in the world. It just sort of… happened.

Back in the 1850s and 1860s, when Dunedin was still being dreamt into existence by Scottish settlers, the city’s layout was drawn up in London by people who had never laid eyes on the place. Working off maps with all the confidence of Victorian planners, they decided neat rectangular grids would do nicely – regardless of what the terrain actually looked like. 

Unfortunately, when the surveyors arrived to peg out the lines, they discovered that one of those innocent-looking streets went straight up a hillside that appeared to have been designed more for goats than carriages. So Baldwin Street was built exactly as it appeared on the plan: a perfect, unwavering line pointing directly at the sky.

As for the name, a gentleman named William Baldwin, a provincial councillor and local newspaper founder has the honour of the street bearing his name. Although whether Baldwin ever trudged up the street is anyone’s guess, I like to imagine he did.

Daily Photo – New Edinburgh (Dunedin)

Ah, Dunedin. Or as the founders – a determined band of Free Church Scots envisioned it: New Edinburgh. Looking down at this photograph, you can’t help but feel a flicker of sympathy for the poor soul charged with turning that grand vision into reality: the surveyor Charles Kettle.

Kettle, bless his geometric heart, arrived with orders to impose the dignified symmetry of an old Scottish capital onto a landscape that clearly loathes straight lines. His solution, and the city’s most curious feature, was The Octagon.

You can spot it hunkered in the centre of the grid here, an eight-sided plaza embraced by the slightly larger eight-sided ring of Moray Place. The sheer Presbyterian grit required to stamp such perfect octagonal order onto a landscape of hills and winding gullies is frankly heroic. Kettle wanted something “Romantic”, but what he achieved was a street plan so ambitious (and so steep – I’m looking at you, Baldwin Street, officially the world’s steepest!) that the horse-drawn traffic of the 1800s must have been perpetually on the brink of despair.

It is, in short, a glorious, muddled masterpiece, a city born from a meticulous Scottish dream and then cheerfully wrestled into being by New Zealand’s uncooperative geology. The result? A town centre that is as memorable as it is magnificently improbable.

Daily Photo – Doctors Point

About a century ago, when a group of local doctors were looking for a place to escape the hustle and bustle of Dunedin, they settled on a quiet stretch of sand and bush just north of Waitati. So, when they came across the seaside sections at Blueskin Bay, they quickly snapped them up, building simple holiday cottages where they could unwind, fish, and forget about the demands of daily life.

The area quickly became known as “Doctors Point” and the name stuck. The place quickly became a favourite weekend retreat for Dunedin’s professional elite. Over the years, parts of the land the doctors once owned were turned into public reserves, and the beach became a place for everyone to enjoy – families, walkers, and swimmers alike.

Today, Doctors Point is one of those beautiful, quietly historic corners of the coast that still carries its story in its name. Standing there at low tide, looking across to Purakaunui and the cliffs beyond, it’s not hard to imagine the doctors arriving by train or car, grateful to trade stethoscopes for fishing rods and a breath of fresh sea air. It’s even got some wonderful sea caves that are good for exploring.

Daily Photo – Purakanui

There’s something delightful about Purakanui, tucked away behind Port Chalmers and Aramoana on Dunedin’s northern coast. On this walk, I stumbled upon a row of weathered boathouses perched above the turquoise water, each one painted a little differently, as if competing gently for attention. The stillness of the inlet, the reflection of the hills, and the smell of salt and pine made it one of those moments you want to bottle up and take home.

Purakanui feels like a hidden place, one that hasn’t changed much in decades. The boathouses lean slightly with age, but that only adds to their charm, they’ve stood through storms, tides, and time itself. The bush presses in close behind, and when the wind drops, the only sounds are the lap of water and the occasional bird cry from the bush.

It’s the kind of scene that reminds you why exploring the backroads around Dunedin is so rewarding.

Daily Photo – Still Boats in Deborah Bay

From Port Chalmers, I headed down the harbour road towards Aramoana – stopping on the way to see an old Torpedo Boat base. Tucked away in Deborah Bay, just around the bend from Port Chalmers, is the curious relic of the remains of Torpedo Boat Mole. It sounds like something out of a war film, but in fact it’s a small stone jetty built in the 1880s when New Zealand decided it needed a navy, or at least a few boats that looked like one. At the time, fears of a Russian invasion ran high, and several “torpedo boats”, essentially small, fast launches armed with spar torpedoes were stationed around the country, ready to defend the ports – just in case!

Dunedin’s was based here in Deborah Bay, sheltered and out of sight from prying enemy eyes. The mole itself was built to provide a base and slipway for the vessel, though the threat of attack never came, and the torpedo boat saw little action beyond the occasional exercise. Today, the remains of the mole sit quietly at the water’s edge, stones weathered and covered with a few picnic tables that are a lovely spot on a fine day, a reminder of a time when the nation nervously watched the horizon for warships that never appeared.

Action Park

Looking for a good Waterslide documentary? Checkout Class Action Park: a 2020 documentary film about the American amusement park Action Park, which was located in Vernon Township, New Jersey.

Daily Photo – The Joy of the Waterslide

I like to think the worlds first waterslide was invented on a fine, sunny day by two blokes on a particularly steep hillside. I imagine one, with a red, oil covered baseball cap and a large handlebar mustache whose name is something like, Hank, putting down his beer, turning to his friend Jerry, and saying:
“Hey, here’s an idea. If we make a long steep ramp and shoot water down it really fast like, into that pool of water at the bottom, we might really have something. We could even sit in things and leave our fate up to gravity.”
To which Jerry replies, “Yeah, we could invite our friends and charge people money!”

This random train of thought got me thinking that of course, not every waterslide adventure ends in fun and in my reading, I found some alarming statistics. In March last year, a study in Texas found that the most common water park injuries were slips and falls, traumatic brain injuries, spinal and neck injuries and near-drowning. Across the pond, our friends in the United Kingdom found in a similar study that more than half of injuries affected the face and head, 29% happened on landing, and 24% were caused by slipping. And here in New Zealand, in the year from 2021, we spent roughly $3 million treating injuries. Clearly, water slides are fun, though not entirely without risk – and not immune from acts of stupidity, like The Banzai Pipeline Stunt in California.

In June 1997, a group of graduating High School seniors were at Waterworld USA, location of the popular Banzai Pipeline water slide. On this occasion, ignoring both the lifeguard and park official warnings, the seniors attempted to pile over sixty people onto the one-person ride. The colossal, unexpected weight caused the elevated fiberglass to snap with a groaning collapse. The pipeline sheared apart, plunging the screaming, interlocked students three stories down onto the hard concrete deck below with over thirty severely injured.

Now, I have absolutely no idea who invented the world’s first waterslide, when it happened, or why, but my guess is they were American – and either extremely confident in their mathematical calculations or had been drinking a whole lot.

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Daily Photo – Burns House – a Kind of Mathematical Poetry

There’s something oddly beautiful about buildings like this, all rhythm and repetition, concrete and glass, each window framing a tiny world. From a distance, it looks almost like a giant puzzle, oddly precise and orderly with small irregularities, a curtain half drawn, a light left on or a reflection that doesn’t quite fit the pattern. That’s the charm of it. What was once just another office block now feels almost nostalgic. There’s a kind of mathematical poetry in its plainness. In fact, if you stare at it long enough – it almost becomes an optical illusion.

Daily Photo – Chicago Skyscrapers & Edwardian Elegances

In December 1909, when the first tenants moved into the New Zealand Express Company Building (now Consultancy House) in Dunedin, what excitement there must have been. People stopped in the street, craned their necks skyward, and gasped in awe at the imposing edifice stretching up towards the clouds. It was unlike anything the city had seen before. Here was an amalgam of Chicago skyscraper and Edwardian elegance at its very finest, seven storeys of groundbreaking architectural wonder.

The soaring colossus that had risen from the ground in Dunedin’s Bond Street in a little over two years was a triumph of modern engineering. To create such a towering structure took around 400 tonnes of steel, over 500,000 bricks, and approximately 1,000 cubic feet of Oamaru stone. Add to that the kauri and rimu timber for floors and doors, the pressed-metal ceilings imported from the United States, and the marble stairs and tiled entryways, and it’s easy to see why Dunedin was proud. It was the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere, its view said to be unsurpassed anywhere else in the city, and its form of construction, as one newspaper noted, “had so far not yet been adopted anyway in the colonies.” This was one impressive building! Even more remarkable was the staggered occupation that took place upon opening, uncommon at the time, especially for large commercial buildings such as this. When the first tenants moved in towards the end of 1909, five of the seven storeys were complete, while work continued on the upper floors until final completion in 1910.

I mention this because the other day I happened to be near Consultancy House, not far from a new building recently opened in a style I like to call pointy and angular, a perfect example of what happens when architects are given a ruler, a lot of money, and far too much confidence. It looks like someone wrapped an office block in a giant, golden Venetian blind. No doubt it’ll take a team of highly paid specialists to fix it the moment a bird so much as sneezes on it. It’s not that I dislike the new four-storey, $45 million ACC Ōtepoti development, it’s just that I much prefer a little grand Victorian or Edwardian elegance, with an ornate façade in my buildings.

Daily Photo – Dunedin Railway Yards

At its peak, Dunedin’s railway yards were incredibly busy. From the late 19th century through to about the 1950s, they were among the busiest in the country. The station wasn’t just a passenger hub; it was the operational centre for the entire Otago region. Hundreds of workers were employed in the yards, long trains loaded with wool, timber, livestock, coal, and manufactured goods constantly came and went, connecting Dunedin to the port at Port Chalmers and to inland towns as far as Invercargill and Central Otago. The smell of coal smoke, the clang of metal, and the hiss of steam were part of the city’s daily life with up to one hundred trains passing through the station each day at its peak.