Daily Photo – McDonald’s Stone Cottage

I drove through heavy mid-morning rain. Here and there, the road dipped into large muddy puddles that I bounced in and out of, spraying water and loose gravel across the car as I did so. Berwick Forest is only a forty-minute drive from Dunedin, and I’d been there on an errand which also provided the opportunity to go on a longer drive, away from the usual motorways, streets, and footpaths that I frequent over the course of a typical week.

Earlier that morning I had passed through small rural settlements with names such as Outram, Woodside Glen, and Berwick. I had it in mind to take a different route home, just to keep things interesting and the mind active. The surrounding countryside gradually became more hilly and disappeared into thick white clouds. Large pools of water were forming into new streams that cut through paddocks and ran down across the road. It had been years since I’d driven this particular road, so I spent the time looking out the car window as I bounced along, identifying possible photographic subjects with a sense of joy and intrigue. Every so often being reminded that I was in charge of a 1,600 kg (1.6 tonnes) motor vehicle, as a stone ricocheted off the windscreen.

At some point, between splashes of water and sprays of stones, I came across one of those road signs that indicate places of interest or historical significance. This one read: “McDonald’s Historic Cottage 2 km.” I thought that sounded like a nice place to drive past, and it was.

I found it thanks to a large blue sign hanging from a fence that told me the wee stone cottage was built in 1860 by the McDonald family. The building was a nice place – small, quaint, but remarkably pleasant for a two-room stone cottage sitting on somebody’s front lawn. Its approximate area being 33 m² (I did the math). Once a two-room dairy and bakery, it also had an illegal whisky distillery hidden under the floorboards.