The alarm woke us up in the midst of a deep sleep. The time was 5:45 am and not even the sun had broken the horizon yet. I forced myself up out of the van ASAP to avoid the inevitable fate of falling back to sleep and snoozing. Jayne came out to the bigger van to let me know she was up and ready to go. A quick bit of morning admin with Katy moving the bedding to the passenger seat to continue sleeping, we were ready to hit the road.
The drive was lovely. No other car was on the road and we got to enjoy (or at least myself and Jayne did, not sure about the others) the great views ahead of us. I had noted that we were going to require some fuel so in an attempt to not lose the other van I did the full speed limit (100kph) where as the larger van stuck to the restricted limit of 90 kph.
Down the road I tried to radio through to Jayne that we would be pulling in for fuel, but I guess the limited range of the radios meant the message didn’t make it. I had refuelled and was just collecting the receipt for our log (there will be a big old report on the finances of this trip coming out at some point because as Engineers we friggin love data!).
After a long morning driving session, we had made it. Before the town of Dunedin had sprang into life we had arrived and parked up. All the sleepy heads woke up and joined Jayne, Brendan and myself in the land of the living. We walked around the corner to find the nearest coffee shop for a well deserved beverage. Just after ordering Jayne had checked her watch and it was time for her to go up the tower and ring the bells in the local church. We sat back and enjoyed our coffees in the comfort of the cafe until we could hear the bells starting.
Upon the start of the bells we made our way back and enjoyed listening to the chimes. Katy and I were sure we could take a shortcut rather than walk around the block. This led us into an empty theatre where the people working didn’t bat an eyelid to our presence. We walked the whole way through the building until we came to an external fire escape, all of which seemed like we shouldn’t have been allowed to pass through but no one stopped us.
We arrived to the front of the church well ahead of the main group thanks to the shortcut. As the bells rang out we explored around the church and read bronze plates which communicated the history of the site. We also had a little dance to the bells which, in hindsight, was probably a bit out of place outside the entrance to the church.
After a good while of listening we went back into the van and decided we wanted breakfast. Jayne informed us she would coffee with her new bell ringing friends so we went for a breakfast at the nearby pub while we waited for her to be finished.
Post breakfast we decided to look at the top attractions of Dunedin. Near the top of the list was the railway station which we had passed in the van on the way up and looked very grand. The inside was no different. This was a proper historic railway station, one that could compete with the great victorian ones back in England. A fantastic mosaic floor embossed with the NZR logo (New Zealand Railway) greeted us as we entered, and stained glass windows added a lovely ambience.
Sadly the train line here no longer runs functional passenger trains (whereby I mean commuting trains). Rather a range of scenic train routes run out of the station for tourists. These did look great and if had we had more time I would have loved to have done them. Still, plenty of other scenic railways to see around the place!
The next stop on our list was the free museum next door. This great place, free to the public, allowed us to have a history of New Zealand. One interesting exhibit dove into the journey settlers made from Europe, which looked really ropey. It made you wonder how bad things must have got for people to pack up and move in this way across a ridiculously large ocean crossing!
We had one more mission to complete. Until 2019, when a re-measurement confirmed that the top prize went to a street in Wales, Dunedin had the steepest street in the world. It now boldly exclaims that it has the steepest street in the southern hemisphere. The ” x in the southern hemisphere” is a line that is used far too often in New Zealand to show boat some of its features. Thats fine, but when observing that the southern hemisphere has half the landmass of that of the northern side, it feels like an unfair contest.
We parked up at the bottom of the road which contained warning signs of how the road is not suitable for all vehicle types. We got out the vans and I started to try and run up the road. A rather pathetic 30 seconds in and my attempt ended. This really was a steep road!!
That is one… 
…really steep street
Having done the main attractions of central Dunedin, Micheal had found that there was a castle which was very highly rated on google and trip advisor, and is listed as one of the must sees in the area. We headed into the van and made our way over. Great views of green hills and sea greeted us as we climbed the roads to get to the castle.
As we pulled in we noticed that the entrance price seemed rather steep, at a 34 NZD per person in the group with no student or group discounts.We radioed the others for their thoughts and it was decided we should push on and got in. We had, after all, just driven up this way.
Some slathering of sun cream later and we walked up to the….really big house. Okay ill be honest here, I was so unbelievably underwhelmed by this place. For the price they charged you would expect something great but it really is just a big stone house, on a hill, that is being renovated by the wealthy family who own it. To not use any of their own capital it is clear they charge the entrance fees to cover it. This is fine if there was anything worth to see for the value of 34 NZD but there just wasn’t. Still we enjoyed being in the sunshine and each others company.
Whilst here I had found a campsite nearby, which confirmed they had availability. Rather than having to drive back around the peninsula we were to get back to Dunedin, it made more sense to stay nearby. The drive from the big house to the campsite was another challenge, with narrow winding roads and elevation changes at every turn. Not really designed for camper vans we thankfully all made it and arrived into the campsite in the small town of Portabello.
We headed out for a few drinks at the nearby pub. Upon entering we saw that they had a giant deck of cards which I assume were only there for novelty purposes. Yet I was interested to see if you could actually play a decent game of cards with them. Now I’m not lying when I say they were giant. They were A4 size! A pain in the backside to shuffle and a challenge to deal, this turned out to be the least practical game of all time. After two rounds any enthusiasm to make it work faded and we moved back to just drinking and chatting.
As the time passed we were nearing sunset. The time when the penguins come back from the waters and rest in their penguin homes for the night. This was set to be our last chance to see them and we all had our fingers crossed this would be successful.
Sadly, this was not the case. We drove out to the coast and parked up near one of the weals that could take you out to the beaches of the peninsula. The sun was dropping rapidly down the horizon as we walked along the track. With each step we picked up the pace as the light was fading around us.
A far greater distance than we had initially considered, we made it to the waves and sandy beach. We were the only people around as the moonlight bounced off the ocean in front of us. There were no signs of any penguins on the beach. We investigated around the sands for any signs (footprints) of the animals but there were none. We were gutted! The only thing we did take away from this was that the sand was squeaky if you dragged your feet along the ground. During the day I’m sure this is a lovely beach (the sand felt so soft), but we were gutted, tired and now in the dark of night having to find our way back.
This particular night granted us a full moon. This allowed us to navigate our way back along the tracks without the need of phone lights. The lack of artificial city lights and urban sounds made this an incredible walk and gave us all a true appreciation of the calm of the night.
We got back to camp deflated and tired. We now realised we weren’t going to see any penguins in New Zealand and if we could, we would’ve done things differently. We will advise of this when we come to writing our guides because there were things we could’ve done differently to ensure we saw them. No time to be sad however, we were off on our way to Queenstown the next day!