If I seem to have dropped off the face of the earth it’s
because we loved Sydney and kept busy every moment. We are now in the middle of a heavenly flight
(never thought I would say that) to Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific, just having
finished a wonderful lunch, a short nap on a FLAT BED, and now I’m ready to
catch up and try to get current. So
much has happened.
Of course we finished the New Zealand tour days ago. After Queenstown, we flew to a town called
Dunedin (Gaelic for Edinburgh), modeled after Edinburgh, Scotland. Dunedin is a small city of hills with
beautiful old homes and churches and a magnificent railway station of granite
and mosaic with an interior to rival a king’s palace. I believe I've already posted some pictures of it.
Although Queen Victoria had declared
Christchurch and Nelson as cities earlier, it took an act of Parliament to
designate a real city and Dunedin was the first in New Zealand for that honor back
in the mid 1800’s. The founder, a Scot
named Frederick Tuckett, had discovered the site and thought it so like his
home town of Edinburgh that he sat down with the Maori chief and paid one cent
an acre for the land. It was the first
time the Maoris had dealt with cash. Back
in Scotland, it cost more than 17 pounds (about a year’s wages) and a four
months voyage at sea to make the trip from Scotland to New Zealand. Thomas Burns, nephew of the poet Robert
Burns, led a campaign to provide an incentive to those adventuresome enough to
make the trip by promising that they would be able to own land, that they would
have access to medical care and that their children would get an education—and all
three promises were fulfilled. One can
only imagine the hardships involved and the difficult life back in Scotland that
would encourage so many to make the trip. The Scots came and later the English and then
the Irish. Today it is a lovely town of 127,000, the Rhododendron Capital of
the country as well as the number one breeding place of the Northern Royal
Albatross and the rare Yellow Eyed Penguin.
The countryside is covered with gorse, that yellow noxious weed that was
introduced by the Scots because it reminded them of home but today has gone
berserk and proved difficult to eradicate, just like the stoat and the possum. We visited
a lovely old family mansion, called the Olveston House, although it was home to the Thiemanns, a prominent Dunedin family
who lived there from 1904 to 1907. We got to see how the upper crust lived at the
time, always interesting to me. The home is furnished with the
original furnishings and contains many personal items that the wealthy family
collected during their trips abroad.
Family pictures adorn the surfaces just like we all have in our
homes and the bedrooms were full of the kinds of personal items we would have today. It’s a sad story though, because
the Thiemanns had just two children, a son who married but died young and childless and a
daughter who never married. After her
death, lacking heirs, the home was deeded to the city and is now a museum. There are lovely gardens as well.
We left Dunedin late in the afternoon, boarding our final
flight on the Cessna for Wellington where our group would finally disburse two
days later. Flying out of Dunedin, we
could see the fields of gorse and the choppy waves of the sea below, but
Warrick soon had us above the clouds and we smoothed out nicely. We flew over Christchurch but were unable to
see anything. Christchurch of course was
all but leveled by a massive earthquake last year and so unfortunately was not
included in our tour.
And then…
Champagne!
Virginia had disappeared for a bit during our potty stop at the airport
and we figured she was on the phone, but actually she was buying a couple of
bottles of champagne—a traditional perk on the final flight of a Bill Peach
aircruise. Her manager had said it was a
pity we would have to forego that particular nicety since we were on such a
small plane (not safe you know), but Virginia had other plans.
As soon as we were above the clouds she popped the cork, passed the
champagne glasses and poured a dram for those of us interested. This of course elevated our moods
considerably and especially when the flight again turned choppy and we found
ourselves doing a veritable dance in our seats, bouncing and balancing and
laughing while making every effort to keep the champagne in the glasses and not
in our laps. All the while Virginia was
filming with her IPad and she has some embarrassing footage of several of us
laughing hysterically while champagne is dripping from the ceiling of the
Cessna. I should point out that the
bumpy patch happened on the second bottle and there were only five of us
imbibing! Including Virginia I must add.
Soon it was smooth sailing again and ever so lighted
headed from the bubbly we began our descent into Windy Wellington where we hear
that the temperature is in the fifties.
We go directly to the Intercontinental where we will spend the last two
nights of the tour.
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