Arrival in Dunedin

Today our ship docked at the place where we could disembark. 

I was intrigued by the albatross nesting on a rooftop opposite my deck.

I walked to my accommodation, 

then went to the centre of town and saw the First Church of Otago,

and St. Paul’s Cathedral.

I kept on seeing the cruise ship from different angles.

Then I visited the Lan Yuan Chinese Garden. 

In the 1860s, the interior of the South Island from Dunedin was the site of several gold rushes, and many Chinese came from Guangdong and Guangxi provinces to work in the goldfields. Unlike in Australia, the Chinese were initially welcomed to the area. After the gold petered out the Chinese ran market gardens and many of the small businesses in the area. Shanghai became a sister city of Dunedin, and they created the plans for this garden, prefabricated and assembled it on an identical shaped site in Shanghai, and shipped it to Dunedin. It’s quite a small garden, and is in the yuanlin style. It’s the only truly authentic Chinese scholars garden in the southern hemisphere. It’s in the late Ming, early Ching period, and one of only three authentic gardens of this style outside China.

It’s also considered to be one of New Zealand’s best gardens (there are about twenty that have been given six stars by the New Zealand gardens trust, and this is one - Larnach Castle garden was another). It’s a pretty impressive garden.