Otago

Most of the south east of New Zealand is called Otago. It extends up the coast towards Christchurch, over to Queenstown and south of Dunedin. While the area includes some of the alpine region, there isn’t much. This was an area that benefited greatly from gold rushes, and may have been more prosperous than the rest of New Zealand in that period. A lot of the buildings in Dunedin remind me of those that were built in Victoria as a result of the prosperity generated by the gold rushes, especially in Bendigo and Melbourne, and I was not surprised, given the similar history. Dunedin was founded in 1848, and the gold rushes were in the 1860s. Melbourne was founded in 1835 and the gold rushes were in the 1850s. Both cities grew very fast.

Today I went on another train trip, along the east coast from Dunedin to Oamaru. But first, I took a photo of the fish and chip shop near the station which harks back to former times.

The train was mostly full, and we were all assigned seats. Unfortunately I wasn’t assigned a seat on the sea side. But from time to time I managed to go to the very small open air compartment and take a few pictures of the coast. I was somewhat surprised by the scenery. We were in the lush New Zealand agricultural countryside I associate with the Canterbury Plains further north, rather than a less populated area that I imagined as the south.

The coast was mainly beach with surf waves going for miles, and lots of rocks. It was beautiful.

The commentary included information about various towns that had prospered as ports during the gold rush, 

and Oamaru was one of them. We stopped there for three hours. It’s called the white city, as many of the gold rush buildings were built of the local limestone. 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have prospered like Dunedin. But it has an impressive public garden. 

And it has turned itself into a vibrant tourist town with a flourishing arts scene. Although it had been raining in Dunedin, it wasn’t here.

There were even some albatrosses on the beach.

When I got back to Dunedin it was still raining, and I drove down the coast to Owaka in the rain along the southern scenic drive. This was fantastic, with lots of glimpses of the amazing coastline, and patches where I was driving along ridge lines seeing farmland spread out below me. I went through many more towns than I expected. It’s a fairly well populated area. But it was raining, so I didn’t stop for photos.