Otago

Downtown Dunedin

February 16, 2025 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

The day we visited the Otago Museum in Dunedin, we did a lot of walking. We parked the car on a back street, walked to the museum, walked back to the car for lunch, walked to the Railway Station, walked to the Otago Museum again, then walked back to the car to go back to our friends’ house for the night. That was over an hour of walking! The little girls were getting pretty tired by the end, but they enjoyed seeing all the sights. We made a point of going to the Railway Station, even though we were there a number of years ago (see this and this), because Miss Joy badly wanted to go inside the “beautiful building” every time we drove past it. It is the most-photographed building in New Zealand, for good reason.

Here are a couple of other random beautiful buildings we saw while we were walking around the downtown area.

Trip to Dunedin

February 2, 2025 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We recently made a trip to Dunedin to celebrate with a friend who, after battling an aggressive brain tumor, is now cancer-free. What a special reason to have a party! We enjoyed the drive through the mountains; the rata is blooming the most it has in about 20 years and was spectacular. That’s the red flowers you can see on the mountain sides in the next few pictures. Rata is a vine that climbs up a tree and eventually engulfs the tree, becoming a tree itself and killing its host. The bees love it, and the beekeepers are quite happy with this season; rata honey is apparently something special.

One afternoon while we were in Dunedin, three families went to the Botanical Garden for an hour or so. The children loved playing on the playground and walking the tracks, and I grabbed these pictures of my girls on a giant pinecone. I got a few other pictures, but they have too many children from other families in them to share here.

This was an overview of part of the gardens, as we headed down the hill to the playground.

On our way home, we stopped for a short time at Moeraki Boulders. The last time we stopped there it was raining, so we didn’t see much. It was fun to investigate today, even though the tide was so high.

We saw a couple of boulders that had split open. It was very interesting to see inside them!

This boulder seems to have only recently washed out of the cliff. It was nearly perfectly spherical, and still smooth. For reference, Mr. Sweetie, to the left, is just over five feet tall, and Gayle is just over six feet.

I always love seeing the Rakaia River when we cross the Gorge on our way through. It is so blue!

I’ll be sharing more pictures in the next two weeks from our trip–there were too many for one post!

The Steepest Street

August 4, 2024 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

The first weekend in June, several of our children went to Dunedin for a conference, a weekend of preaching, at a church there. Some friends from this area went along, too. After the conference, before heading home, they made a quick stop to check out what is listed in the Guiness Book of World Records as the steepest street in the world–Baldwin Street. It has a gradient of 35%–the result of following plans laid out for the town from England without taking local topography into consideration!

This one is here just for fun–Simon clowning around one of the evenings!

And a funny bit of trivia? Three of my children, two of whom were in the group that went to Dunedin, are in the United States right now. They had a 12-hour-layover in San Francisco, and a cousin took them on a short tour of the city. One thing they did was to drive down what is known as the curviest street in the world!

From Te Anau Over the Haast Pass

March 28, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

On Day 11 of our big trip, the second-to-last day, we left our friends’ house in Te Anau fairly early and started our two biggest days of travel on the entire trip. We first drove to Queenstown, which took a couple of hours. It poured for awhile, and was cloudy the rest of the day, but the scenery was still incredible.

We drove along this lake for a long time. Queenstown is on the far end of it.

Notice the name on the brown sign? We were were going up the Devil’s Staircase here!

We stopped for a few minutes at a lookout. We would have stayed longer to enjoy the scenery, but a small person in the family had an emergency need, so we got moving again quickly.

Almost to Queenstown!

I think this is the other side of Queenstown, on our way to Cromwell.

Cromwell is a fruit-growing center, so we stopped at a few shops to buy peaches, apricots, and plums. At one, we bought ice creams for the children. Can you tell that Miss Joy loves ice cream?

This place had incredible gardens we could wander through.

This lavender farm was right outside Cromwell.

Mr. Imagination always kept Miss Joy happy when he rode beside her. They spent a lot of time playing with wet wipes. Miss Joy scrubbed her face, neck, hands and feet very thoroughly, over and over!

We stopped in Wanaka just long enough to fuel up the vans, and then headed across Haast Pass. We were no longer in the mood for any sightseeing!

Heading up into the mountains!

After we crossed the pass and were again on the West Coast (notice the difference in vegetation?), we stopped at a waterfall. We saw this log covered with piles of rocks!

The boys enjoyed climbing on the rocks and skipping small ones.

The rocks were all like these.

We debated for awhile about driving the rest of the way home, or camping in a DOC campground a little way down the road. We had about five hours yet to reach home, and it was 3:00 in the afternoon. What a hard decision! We finally decided to stay at the campground and go home the next day, according to our original plan. At the campground, we discovered a creek along a track in the bush. I let the children play in it, and they had great fun! The older boys skipped stones, and coached the little boys in building a dam, and the girls played in the water. It wasn’t very warm, but not cold, either. We had enough clothes for the rest of the way home, so I decided not to worry about wet clothing—we had watertight tubs to put them in for the last leg of the trip!

This was our last night camping with the vans!

I cooked a stew on the campstove in the small picnic area, and we thoroughly enjoyed being by ourselves again!

See how the beds were set up? It was surprisingly comfortable—and quite cozy!

Esther took several short video clips of the fun at the creek—enjoy this glimpse into our evening!

Milford Sound—Part 3—The Trip Back

March 21, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

After we walked everywhere we could around Milford Sound, we gathered at the back of the vans to eat our sandwiches. It was raining, so some of us stood under the open back door; others got inside and sat in the seats. Wherever we were, the sandflies were BAD! They came in clouds, attacking every inch of exposed skin. We didn’t waste any time eating, and got on the road again quickly to escape the hungry hordes.

This is what we saw as we got on the road again. The mountains were absolutely spectacular, even through the rain.

Here we were heading up to the Homer Tunnel again, from the seaward side. Again, there were sheer rock cliffs going straight up. It’s nearly impossible to get a feel for it from a photo. I was absolutely awestruck by these mountains.

There’s the tunnel! I was quite disappointed that the light had just turned green. I was hoping we would have several minutes to sit there waiting, and soak in the grandeur of the scene.

Have you noticed the water streaming down the rocks all around?

Going down the landward side.

We stopped at a pulloff beside a waterfall. Miss Joy was asleep, so I stayed in the van with her while the others went to the viewing platform. This kea was on top of a motorhome; it rode for a little ways, and then flew back to our vans.

Miss Joy didn’t sleep long, so I got out of the van and went to see the waterfall, too.

When we moved on, the red van went ahead. Maybe I needed to feed Miss Joy? I can’t remember for sure. That left Esther and the two little girls and I together when we stopped at another overlook where we could see this spectacular valley. I can’t remember what it was called, but it was an amazing sight.

Our next stop was the Cascade Creek Nature Walk at Lake Gunn. Miss Joy needed some time to play, so I stayed in the gray van with the two little girls while everyone else went on the walk. These are Esther’s pictures.We also stopped at Mirror Lakes. A nice boardwalk led along the edge of a beautiful pond.

We were trying to get a picture of all the children, and another tourist offered to take our family picture, so we quickly organized for this.

Then, we went back to work on the children’s picture.

Miss Joy didn’t want to be separated from Mommy.

Finally, Daddy had to help keep her in place while I took the picture.

When we got back to Te Anau, we still had a few hours of daylight, so we stopped at the bird sanctuary. This is a takahe, a very rare bird. They have a couple of pairs there.

These are blue ducks, also very rare.

Paradise ducks aren’t exactly rare, but we enjoyed watching them. The mother (the one closest to the camera) was very worried that we would hurt her babies, and kept trying to get us through the fence.

This is a relative of the kea, some sort of a parrot, but I don’t remember what it’s called.

This is another parrot.

A table and chairs just her size!

A little house for her, too!

This is the view from our friends’ house. I would love to see it on a sunny day!Here is a video put together from several clips that various family members. The first clip was taken in the Eglinton Valley, on the way to Milford, by Mr. Imagination. Next is Esther’s clip of going through the Homer Tunnel, and then of going down the mountain from the tunnel. After that is a clip from sea level at Milford Sound, followed by one of the waterfall where we saw the kea. Then, there is one of Lake Gunn and a few from the nature walk.

Milford Sound—Part 1

March 14, 2021 by NZ Filbruns 4 Comments

Near the end of our trip, we spent a day driving to Milford Sound and back. We have wanted to go there for a long time, and especially to see the Homer Tunnel, which is part of the highway going out to Milford.

We started out around 9:00 from Te Anau, where we had spent the night with some friends. There were low clouds; we could see the water of Lake Te Anau, and the lower slopes of the mountains.

As we drove on, the clouds thinned little by little, and we caught glimpses of the towering mountains lining both sides of the road.

This valley with farmland opened up as we came over one hill. Most of the way, we drove through a valley with mountains fairly close on either side.

Lake Te Anau is long! I think this is near the end where the highway goes away from the lake shore.

After about an hour of driving, we left the farmland behind completely and were driving through wild country.

This is the Eglinton Valley, where we stopped at a pull-off for a few minutes.

The weather soon closed in again.

We stopped at another pull-off to swap drivers. This would have been about an hour and a half after leaving, just before we reached the Homer Tunnel. There was a beautiful little creek, and a lot of interesting vegetation.

…to be continued. After my first sorting, I got down to 141 pictures for this day. I got that reduced to around 120—still too many for one post!

From Invercargill to Te Anau

March 7, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

On the ninth day of our big trip, we drove from Invercargill to Te Anau. To drive straight there would have taken only a couple of hours, so we decided to take a longer route and see more sights. W went west and a little south, and stumbled across a historical museum in Riverton. Because it was raining, we decided to spend part of our day there—it was dry inside! The museum was very interesting. Our tour started with a movie about the Maori and the first white settlers in the area, and then we spent time exploring the wonderful exhibits. Someone noticed this poster, showing gems that can be picked up at a nearby beach, and Esther took a picture of it. The boys enjoyed the room with all the rocks! I liked the historical exhibits better, but this room was quite interesting, too.

We found Gemstone Beach on the map, so we decided to stop there. It was drizzling, but not too hard. The group of people in the center of this picture are our children. They figured that the creek might be a good place to find gems.

This is what the beach looked like. Most of these stones are about 1/2-3/4 inch in diameter. Such a variety! I don’t think we found anything too valuable. We found a lot of jasper, and some that may have been jade, and a lot of others that were just plain beautiful. We filled a 2-quart bucket with them to bring home. They are still sitting in that bucket, except for a few that I put in a quart jar to weight it down so it wouldn’t spill when I put sunflowers in it.

I was quite amused when I noticed “Windswept Trees” on the map! Yes, there were windswept trees—but not more than other places along the coast!

Here are some of the windswept trees.

Shortly after our visit to Gemstone Beach, where we ate our picnic lunch, we turned north and drove for a couple of hours to Te Anau. I would love to see what the area is really like; it was very cloudy and we couldn’t see the mountains that I’m sure were towering over us.

We saw a sign for a historic bridge, so decided on the spur of the moment to stop. That’s one thing I enjoyed about this trip. Most days, we had enough time that we could stop when we wanted to see something. We planned the trip so that, except for the last two days, we never drove more than 2-3 hours a day. This bridge was fun to walk across.

Simon standing on the bridge cables.

Simon found a rope swing down by the river, and gave the little ones some rides on it.

We saw a lot of farming!

When Miss Joy fell asleep, we decided not to stop for awhile—and then came around a curve and saw this area, with a pull-off for photos. We stopped for about a minute to enjoy the scene.

I think this is Manapouri. I was intrigued by the mountain sticking up in the middle of this picture.

I was also amused by the name on this sign.

South of Dunedin

February 24, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We spent two nights with our friends in Dunedin. While we were there, I didn’t take any pictures. It was pouring the entire time, and we mainly stayed inside. Our friends had built a guesthouse, which we slept in. I wish I would have gotten a picture, but every time I went to it, I was trying to carry a baby and an umbrella, and dodging around the river that was running down the path we took up to it! It was very comfortable, and we enjoyed our time with them. We left late Sunday afternoon, and headed on south to visit some friends in the Catlins. Just before we left, Esther wanted to get a picture with her two little sisters, in the new dresses she made for them all just before our trip.

Our friends live on a mountain, and the road going down is slightly daunting! I have no idea what the gradient is, but it’s steep!

This is the Dunedin Train Station, which I posted pictures of the other time we were down there. You can find the pictures here and here, if you’re interested.

More interesting buildings in Dunedin.

Houses on the hillside. Dunedin is a very hilly city!

Maybe half an hour after we got on the road, the skies opened in a cloudburst. It was raining so hard that we had to slow down quite a lot. We could hardly see ahead of us. We kept moving, but slowly, and soon the rain let up—but then we started seeing flooding.

We crossed a bridge over the Taieri River, and saw the water pouring over the stopbank on the far side. Esther was taking a video at the time, and caught that.

I don’t think anyone drove into that paddock that day!

It was rather a relief to get away from the flooding as we continued farther south. I was a bit concerned that the road might end up closing, and didn’t want to be caught somewhere we didn’t want to be.

The Clutha River was high, too, but not as bad as up north.

The Catlins are beautiful! Rolling, green hills with cattle and sheep on them.

Twizel to Dunedin

February 21, 2021 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

Day 5 of our trip was New Year’s Day. We had a leisurely morning with our friends in Twizel, including a late breakfast eaten on the lawn in the warm sunshine (little did we know that was almost the last sunshine we would see for a week!), and then got on our way down the road sometime around noon. We headed south; our goal was to reach the home of other friends in Dunedin. Up until this point, we were retracing routes we had driven other times, but this day everything was new. We drove through a lot of very dry country, broken with lakes here and there that stretched for miles along the road; I am guessing they were all man-made, for generating electricity.

See those clouds coming in? The first hour or two that we were on the road the weather was nice. It was cloudy, but that kept it from being too hot. Then, the heavens opened, and it started pouring! When we finally stopped to eat lunch (around 3:00), it was pouring so hard that we pulled into an empty carpark and pulled the vans up so that the sliding doors were facing each other. Esther and I made sandwiches in our van and then radioed to the other van to open a window so we could pass the plates through. We were so fogged up inside that we couldn’t see each other, but if we opened a window we got drenched quickly!

This was one of the few times that Little Miss rode in our van. The girls enjoyed reading books together.

We saw a sign for the Aviemore Hydro Station and made a quick decision to have a look. First, we crossed the river on the road that goes over the dam, and had a look down from the top.

Then, we drove back across. See the tracks on the sides of the road? It looked like a crane goes on those, and can open the trapdoors in the middle, probably for servicing the power plant.

Then, we looked at the power station from the bottom.

This was a very interesting feature. A fish ladder led to a spawning stream—a man-made channel duplicating the conditions in the wild in which trout lay their eggs. The spawning stream doubles back on itself; it’s apparently a kilometer long altogether.

I grabbed this photo of a ram in the paddock beside the drive down to the power station. My boys saw me taking the photo and called on the radio to inform me that it was a merino. I was impressed by the horns!

An interesting planting of trees we saw on a hillside, after it started raining.

One thing I really wanted to see was the Moeraki Boulders. It was drizzling, but not hard, so we stopped when we reached them, and walked about 10 minutes down the beach to see the famous sight.

These boulders are concretions, formed by something rolling around in sediments and building up layer after layer.

Mr. Sweetie

Miss Joy

Simon

Simon, me, Mr. Sweetie, Elijah

Mr. Diligence, Mr. Sweetie and Little Miss

Then, it started raining harder, and we were already late for tea with our friends in Dunedin, so we hurried back to the vans as fast as we could.

Trip to Dunedin, Part 5—The Miscellaneous Pictures

October 7, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

How would you like to live on a road like this? Our friends do! We kept the van in first or second gear to go down it!

I love the old buildings in Dunedin! Christchurch had them when we came here, but a lot came down in or since the earthquakes.

We still don’t know what the Chinese Gardens are like. It cost to get in, so we did free things instead.

Saturday morning we had to drive south of Dunedin to pick up a turkey Mr. Inventor bought to be the new father of his flock. This is the farm from which we bought it.

The boys were fascinated with the man’s junk pile!

Random scenery on the way back to the city.

In the Settler’s Museum. Mr. Handyman twisted his foot Saturday climbing Mount Cargill, so he was glad to rest awhile.

We walked a block or two in Dunedin after dark, and saw this amazing garden. There are two sets of stairs coming down the hill, making an X, with the flower bed in between. I think the flowers were pansies, and the green plants were celery!