Te Anau to Dunedin

• breakfast opportunities in Te Anau were not numerous
• I got the impression that we were in the only actual hotel in town, and that all other travellers were either backpackers staying in a few hostels; or people on tour buses that stopped briefly later in the day for coffe and a bun
• we ended up at the backpacker cafe, which served a nuritious but assembly line buffet breakfast
• you want butter on your toast, that's extra; jam, that's extra, cram and sugar in your coffee, there's a charge for that, and the coffee too if you want a second cup
• it was fuel for the journey, but not much more
• we began to drive south-eastward across New Zealand by about 10:00 a.m., on good roads that wended their way over broad plains, and low mountain ranges, with higher mountains in the distance
• very spectacular scenery, that looked somewhat familiar, and, of course, we were driving across the Plains of Rohan (LOTR: the Return of the King), more commonly called Southland (the bottom of South Island); although we did not see habitations with a vaguely Scandinavian look about them, nor large numbers of horsemen in sort-of Viking gear
• about half way on the drive to Dunedin we cam to the town of Gore, which advertises itself as the "World Brown Trout Fishing Capital"; emphasized by what I assume is the world-s largest brown trout, about 20 feet long, depicted leaping vertically
• it is a lovely, sleepy town in a broad river valley, with the Mataura River running through it, presumably supplying the brown trout
• wandering around the town, one also comes across a monument announcing that one is in N.Z.' Capital of Country Music, this monument probably would be classified as the world's largest stylized 6-string acoustic guitar (down under seems to specialize in these sorts of "world's largest" things, although Oz has far more of them)
• the main street is lined by very brightly painted shops, with the street having a "western" look, except for the flower-filled median running up the middle
• also different from the wild west is the roof over the side-walks, welcome with the bright sun of summer beating down
• past Gore the drive got somewhat more urban, with lots of little towns to drive through, and near the coast the direction turns north-eastward as the road parallels the coast, but 5 to 15 km inland
• arrived in Dunedin near 3 p.m., checked into our hotel Scenic Hotel Southern Cross, on the corner of Princess & High Street
• if that sounds like we'd stumbled into Edinburgh, that is correct, Dunedin is Scots for Edinburgh, and is a city build by Scots, in a very Scottish style
• a lot of the major city buildings are of lime stone, like its namesake, and there are hints of Scottish influence everywhere
• just one note on parking at this hotel; to get to the prking lot after unloading luggage, one has to drive almost 1 km around the block to the parking entrance, and then one has to park on a very large prking lot that would make a very good skateboard park; ramps at odd angles to one another and to the horizontal; yes parking slots are marked off, but getting to them feels likew driving on a roller coaster; I never did find out what this surface actually wasmeant for
• with parking being what it was, after checking in we proceeded to explore Dunedin on foot
• as I mentioned, Scotish memorials are everywhere (although there is one pub, "The Duke of Wellington, which has on it signs adverising, German, English, and Irish beer, that doesn't fit!), and the first notable building one comes upon near the hotel is the First Church of Otago, needles to say, Prebyterian
• a very large neo-gothic limestone structure, surrouned by very large, fenced grounds, with a large separate "hall", it points to the fact that Dunedin was at one time very prosperous, and still is
• the interior is large and well-lit, but very obviously Presbyterian, with a pulpit where where most churches would have an altar
• wandering around the center of town, all roads eventually come into the "Octagon", which is exactly what the name implies, an 8-sided plaza, with 8 roads leading into it
• it is obviously the centre of the city's life, lined by commercial buildings, with most of them having restaurants and bars on the 1st floor
• the "square" has lawns on which students were lying about in uniforms waiting, as it is also a bus hub
• a very large statue of Robert Burns is on one side, not improved by being a seagull resting place, Dunedin being a coastal town
• the Anglican cathedral is just off the Octagon, and was open so we wandered in, but not without being scrutinized by an "office dragon" who informed us that we would have to be very quiet as a rehearsal was going on
• this being a Friday afternoon, we thought wedding, but no, it was an ordination rehearsal, which had really ended, except we overheard some concluding discussions between the very young man in civies and shorts with sandals who was obviously the ordinand (so I revised my assumption to rehearsal of a priesting), and the Dean in red-trimmed cassock , about some logistics
• afterwards, as the Dean was leaving, I introduced myself, and discovered in fact they had been rehearsing the consecration of the new Bishop of Otago, and that I had just missed "my Canadian bishop", Victoria Matthews (she had indeed been my Canadian bishop)
• the conversation got me an insistent invitation to the consecration, but I begged off on the grounds that we had firm travel commitments, which the Dean assumed meant we had to leave town, and I didn't correct his assumption
• we then found dinner at one of the restaurants on the Octagon, and after that continued our walk-about, to the railway station, which is an amazing Victorian red-brick "wedding cake" construction
• by the time we got there, it was closed, so we could only view the equally elaborate interior through a few windows
• then back to the hotel for the night