New Zealand - Dunedin and Invercargill (Home to Burt Munro of ‘Fastest Indian’ fame.)

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Kent & Berkshire
19th - 25th February

Dunedin and Invercargill (Home to Burt Munro of ‘Fastest Indian’ fame.)

The spacious spot we’d erected our tent on the night before had become surrounded by late arrivals and we had to contend with the noise and smell of their exhausts as they left the next morning. :rolleyes: Not a pleasant start to our first full day in Dunedin. However, I noticed some other campers leaving from a more dedicated pitch right by the river itself and so after a quick check with the owner, we lifted the tent and contents, and dragged it over to our new spot. Much better. :grin

After reviewing the attractions in Dunedin we settled on a tour of the Cadbury’s factory :D, the Speights brewery :beer:, visiting the Albatross sanctuary and taking a boat trip to hopefully see some fur seals and the yellow-eyed penguins.

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Dunedin railway station is said to be one of the World's most beautiful buildings. Dunedin itself is actually based on Edinburgh.

The following day we were supposed to do both the factory and brewery tours but only managed the Brewery as we took our morning & lunch time at such a nice pace (read: very slowly ! :D) that it meant all the spaces for the Cadbury’s tour were filled for the day. The tour was very good and we got to sample all their various brews for 30 mins or so at the end. :beerjug: You could drink as much as you liked and all beers were on tap for your own pouring. :beer: I was driving and so just sampled them and drank two or so whole very small glasses. :nod They even had a Summer ale which had apricots in :eek. My first impression was that it was too sweet for me, but we were told after a few sips that it became very palatable. I tried a few more sips and understood what our guide was saying but it wasn’t for me, especially when there were so many other brews I did like. :grin It was too late :rolleyes: :D when we left the brewery to cook our own dinner and so we settled for a set-menu Chinese in town which was pleasant.

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Taken just outside the Speights brewery. :eek

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The brewery was immaculate inside.

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Apricot in a beer !?!?!?!?..........Nah !!!!! :grin

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There was space for a man and a woman in this 'poster'. Sylvia looked a 'bit' better so I spared you the shot of me !!.. :D

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...however, you're not getting away with this one !! :D

We’d booked our Cadbury’s tour for this morning and so set off into town. I was looking forward to it as I have a very sweet tooth but from the outset I thought the tour was very tacky and looked a bit like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory financed by Spar. :confused: :rolleyes: :yikes :tears It was one of their maintenance days so over half the production lines weren’t running which significantly detracted from the purpose of visiting. :nenau They had provided a video of the normal process by the production lines but I could have watched that at home. I was very disappointed. Sylvia though, who’s not so keen on chocolate and even less keen on Cadburys (being from Switzerland.) enjoyed it, which, as I say, is more than she would say about their chocolate. :eek Only their ordinary milk chocolate resembled the UK’s, the rest was over-sweet and horrible. :tears They have a considerable number of additional chocolate products in New Zealand than we have at home and I tried a few of their best sellers but their flavour was very artificial and cheap.

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'Perkynana' would you believe ?? ...........horrible..yuk...horrible...please please keep it in New Zealand !

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If there was one good thing to come out of the Cadbury's tour it was the 1 ton liquid Chocolate fall. The purple tower has a vat at the top holding 1 ton of molten chocolate. On every tour the vat opens and the whole lot is dropped for the height of the tower. Not rocket science but loud, messy and quite a lot of fun.......

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...well that and driving the delivery truck !! :D :rolleyes:

Later on in the afternoon we took the Monarch boat trip and got to see some fur seals and a couple of Albatross in flight. For the hour we were on the boat, $40 each was too much. No sooner than we’d been at the prime viewing point for 5 mins or so and it was time to come back. :confused: :( :mad: Sylvia managed to lose the camera case I’d bought for the now-waterlogged ‘waterproof’ Olympus, but was now using for her Sony, out to sea. :mmmm

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The tip of the Otago peninsular. The building at the top is a hide for watching Albatrosses.

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Cormarons nests - Bizzare !

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Another view of the peninsular from the boat - Note the erosion as a result of bird life.

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A very chilled-out fur seal we saw from our boat.

Yet later still, we visited an Albatross colony/centre positioned right at the end of the Otago peninsular which was quite interesting. One of the facts that stuck in my mind is that after they reach maturity, an Albatross will spend 6 years out at sea without returning to land at all. :eek: 6 years !! :eek: Whilst we were there, we got to meet a Swiss couple who’ve been travelling for 23 years in a Toyota Land Cruiser. (The Schmidt‘s) They are in the Guiness book of records funnily enough !! :augie They’ve so far covered over 650,000km’s during this time. :eek: Sylvia had read about them on the Internet and we spent half an hour or so in pleasant exchanges of experiences. We’d again left dinner too late to prepare for ourselves and so went to an expensive and very busy Pizza restaurant in town.

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A few shots of Albatrosses in flight....or is it Albatrossi ?? :D

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The Schmidt's and their Land Cruiser, 650,000km's and only one owner...I think I might have seen it on E-Bay last week ! :D

The following morning we were to set off to Invercargill, a further 250km South, but before leaving we wanted to see and ride up the steepest road in the world (Officially :nod :augie). It wasn’t so far from our camp site so after loading the bike we trundled up to it. Sylvia was a bit anxious about riding up it but you just have to take these opportunities don’t you. The most surprising thing about it was it’s length at around 1/2 mile long. We spent a few moments there going up and down for some photos and then we set off.

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The World's steepest road. Baldwin St on the out skirts of Dunedin. (However according to the Internet, Bolivia has the steepest road too !)

Our route to Invercargill deliberately took us along the coast via an area called Nugget point where we were led to believe we would see all sorts of wild life. In fact, Nugget point is a piece of land jutting out (also known as a Peninsular !) with a light house on it. The only wild life we could see was always at least 150-200m away and always fur seals. :rolleyes: It was windy, cold and we wern’t that impressed and so left, along with many others in search of more rewarding ventures. :rolleyes: We were also thirsty & hungry and so set off again once returning to the bike for somewhere warmer to make our sandwiches and coffees. :D

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Nugget point - hhmmmmmmmm :rolleyes:

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Fantastic eh !?! :rolleyes:

The weather stayed quite cold and so we stopped at a café and tried one of their Burgers with a few large hot coffees. Whilst we were there we met a couple of pleasant American Doctors who were on a cycling trip. After lunch we resumed our ride and set back off for Invercargill. I’d been a bit grumpy :rob in the morning and hadn’t really been enjoying the riding at all. By stark comparison after lunch I was positively much happier as corner after corner just kept unfurling right in front of us. :D :grin The scenery too was very impressive.

We had one more stop to make en-route and that was to the Purakaunui water Falls. After a 15 or so mile de-tour we found it. We’d seen many photographs of it and in them it looked massive, however in real life it was actually much smaller. :confused: We took our photographs and continued back on to the excellent roads that took us the rest of the way to Invercargill. The ride was excellent. :grin

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The Purakaunui water Falls.....looked much bigger in the advert !! :rolleyes: :D

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After a bit of scouting around and some shopping we found ourselves a ‘Top Ten’ camp site just outside of town in a fairly quiet area. We set up camp and enjoyed dinner followed by the TV in their lounge area(Something you see on most decent campsites in new Zealand).

On our first full day in Invercargill we went in to see the Burt Munro’s memorabilia kept at Hayes Hardware(HH) in the centre of town. When we arrive at the store, we meet two other British biker couples and are invited by the owner of HH (who owns Burt's bikes and spares), with the other Brits, to see many of Burt’s home made engine parts. Before leaving though, we have a quick look at a model of Burt’s bike in the shop used for filming and purchase a couple of special edition DVD’s of the film, T-Shirts, postcards and a souvenir pack containing copies of Burt’s speed records and places of interest in town.

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Some of the older buildings in Invercargill.

With time being short I rushed to get my camera (my second Nikon D70 on this trip) out of the top box only to find that somehow I’d managed to crack the rear LCD and it no longer worked. :blast :blast Arrggghh. :blast :blast It was my own stupid fault as I’d obviously squeezed it in one too many times but to break at this point in the trip was a real pain. Too much still to see and record to not have a decent camera, too close to coming home and needing all the money I could hang on to for re-establishing myself back home. In the end I took pictures ‘in faith’ for the day that they would still be captured. (which they were.)

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Taken in Hayes Hardware.

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As it says on the tank and fairing.

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A replica of Burt's record making bike-also in Hayes Hardware. If I remember correctly they used a Ducati engine in the film.

The visit to the HH’s owners garage (at his home) was incredible as he had so many of Burt’s bits & pieces in his garage. He also had a few collectors bikes there as well, of which there was a beautiful Triumph Trident, a personal favourite of mine. :thumb2

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Some of the pistons that Burt made or was in the process of using to make 'better' ones.

Later in the afternoon we have a lot of fun visiting places of significance to Burt around town. :D In one very bizarre incidence we were looking for the plot where Burt’s shed (his home) used to be. After riding up and down the road a few times, the only area we could see that looked to be correct has long since had a house built on it and had the present encumbents out in their front garden. At the point we were about to leave the owners called out and assured us that this was ‘Burt’s turf’ :eek: and were invited to walk/stand on it !! :eek Initially I was a bit wary of such hospitality :eek (not that I expected a Sweeney Todd type experience but….) however the owners really were that friendly and we enjoyed chatting with them for 15 or so minutes. We were even shown the point in the garden where the lemon tree once stood. :D (For those of you the know ! :nod ). We visited a few more spots in town and called it a day. Burt Munro is a legend in new Zealand. With a population of around 5 million people who are tucked away on the other side of the world, any significant Worldly achievements are of immense pride to the Kiwis…....and rightly so. :thumb2

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The original site of Burt's shed.

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The siting of this shed is approximately where Burt's origianlly was. - The Lemon tree site was not far behind it.

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The first road to intersect with Burt's road.

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This is the actual hall used in real-life and the film where Burt had his Birthday party and collection to help pay for his trip to the States.

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Oreti Beach where Burt used to speed trail his various designs...illegally.

The people of Invercargill are the friendliest we’d met in New Zealand and amongst the most friendly in the world. :thumb2 Sylvia had actually commented on Burt Munro when watching the ’Fastest Indian’ in Nepal, that nobody was that friendly. After visiting Invercargill she revised her opinion. We send a big Thank you to Invercargill. :thumb2 :clap You gave us a great day & weekend !:thumb2 :clap

On Sunday morning I visit the local Baptist church which was quite interesting as it had a visiting American Evangelist & his wife and young son there. In the afternoon we visited Bluff point, the most accessible Southern point of New Zealand by road vehicle. Whilst there, we took quite a few pictures to mark the most Southerly point, and in a way, the end of my 'Round-The-World trip'.

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The bottom of the World as far as this trip is concerned.

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This was a shot to book-end John & I's photo back up in Alaska at the begining of the trip.

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The area appears 'unsurprisingly enough' to also be known as the Lands End of New Zealand.

The following morning we leave Invercargill after trying hopelessly to find a replacement camera. The ride now takes us North Westerly and is very windy and largely uneventful but we finally get to our next destination, Te Anau, the central point for both the Doubtful & Milford Sounds.

Both camp sites in Te Anau had employed pretty rude/sharp employees which was quite a shock after Invercargill. :eek We weren’t the only tourists to comment on this either. We settle at a ‘Kiwi’ campsite in the end as there is plenty of tent space and our spot is far away from most probable noise sources.

The rude/brash behaviour continues when we visit what looks to be the busiest Chinese restaurant in town. I won’t bore you will all the specific details of our experience but as an example of how the evening went, I will tell you of one small problem with our request for some tea which had been included as part of the set menu we‘d ordered. We requested the tea half way through the meal (assuming it would be Chinese) and we got black English tea. A small problem/misunderstanding I thought but the waitress huffed and puffed and aggressively exclaimed in a loud voice that ’If I'd wanted Chinese tea, I should have asked for it’ and she started to leave our table with the teas. I, by re-tort, as she was in the process of leaving, suggested that if there was a choice, as our Waitress she should have made us aware…as this was, after all, a Chinese restaurant and it wasn’t an implausible assumption on our part to expect Chinese tea. We did eventually get our 'Chinese' tea via another waitress who apologised for the misunderstanding. Needless-to-say, this experience combined with another, along with a very poor meal anyway, made for a pretty rubbish first evening. :spitfire

This was not the welcome to Te Anau, one of New Zealand’s premier Tourist areas, I’d expected and the only place in the whole of New Zealand that turned out to be so short-tempered and rude. :mad:


Mike.
 


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