Beautiful,Beautiful Dunedin

We sailed in this morning- January 18 -into the beautiful Port Chamblers area near Dunedin. We learned that the name Dunedin comes from the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh- the capital of Scotland. The green, rolling hillsides did remind us of Scotland.

We took a taxi to the downtown area and were met by Sigurd Wilbanks and Erica Burky at the Train Station. The Train Stattion has a beautiful tile floor, stained glass windows. and lovely ceramic work all around. For us it was wonderful to have cousins who are "almost" natives who are willing and able to show us around.

The 3rd son of my cousin Rich teaches Chemistry at the University of Otago. The U of Otago is the 2nd oldest university in New Zealand and has more than 20,000 students. Sigurd teaches Chemistry.

We first drove to the campus and walked to see the mixture of beautiful. old university classical buildings and also admire the more modern buildings. Sig's office is in one of the more modern buildings so he gets to look out onto the more classical structures.

The campus is lovely and we admired many of the gargoils on one of the buildings. One especially reminded us of the lawyers in our family- and glad none of them wear those wigs.

We headed up the hill to the Dunedin Botanical Gardens. The area is beautiful. Some of the flowers were beyond their prime but the walk through the pathways was lovely. Erica is quite accomplished in the names and characteristics of plants and gave us a lesson abotu a plant that early settlers used to write on.

We went down to the bottom to the Rose Gardeon, the herb garden and the cactus garden. All was so very lovely. Never been in a public garden where you could walk on the grass. Sigurd reminded us that the Bristish Empire established Botanical Gardens in all their colonies to help people remember their connections and history. Never thought about that!

We went to the middle of town to the Octagon- complete with a statue of Robert Burns and a person sized chess board. There was also a fair of crafty things going on but nothing looked especially interesting in that department. We did shop in a wool store and learned about the extra warm combination of wool and possum ( not like our opossum) and bought a couple of pieces.

Had a yummy lunch and then drove out to their wonderful, light, airy, comfortable and spacious house on the Otega Penisula. The views on the drive up and back were just amazing.

How grateful we are to have family so willing to share their time and knowledge with us in the faraway place. Nothing like seeing the town through the eyes of someone who has lived here for a number of years.

They drove us all the way back to the ship- with a stop at the supermarket to get wine and see what a real Kiwi market looks like.

Dunedin was great- thanks to the special attention we got from Sigurd and Erica.