Day Eighty Liberton

I enjoyed my walk in the sunshine around the streets close to home today.  I walked 20 streets

986. Raleigh Street
987. Hillary Street 
988. Dover Street
989. Lowe Street
990. Tasman Street
991. Tensing Street
992. Egmont Street
993. Allenby Avenue
994. Blundell Street
995. Hislop Street
996. Wilkinson Street
997. Truby King Crescent
998. Pryde Street
999. Croydon Street
1000. Barclay Street
1001. Buccleugh Street
1002. Glencairn Street
1003. Gladstone Road
1004. Forrester Avenue
1005. Newhaven Street

 

 It was a frosty start to the morning and I walked gingerly around the streets that were still in the shade.The first group of streets I walked around are all named after mountains and climbers.  Hillary Street and Tensing Street being the most obvious along with Lowe Street for climbing Mount Everest. Tasman and Egmont are New Zealand mountains and Dover is a mountain in Antarctica.

Many of the streets in Liberton have great views.  Some of the streets have good views of Flagstaff and look towards where I was walking yesterday.

Streets on the other side of the hill have great views looking towards the city.  After stopping to admire the view, I walked down the hill to then walk back up to where I started.

The further down the hill I walked, the views changed to looking towards Opoho and North East Valley.  The road also became very narrow as it grew steeper the nearer I got to the bottom.

The residents of these houses have very steep sections/gardens and very little parking but the views they get are outstanding. These are streets that I have not walked yet.

Of course what goes down must also go up and some of the up was quite steep but as I walked up the hill, I was reward with more great views.   This is looking towards Opoho and are streets that I have not walked yet.

The higher I walked up the hill, the views changed and I was able see over to the Dunedin Botanical Gardens with a glimpse of the harbour and Waverley beyond.

And as I neared the crest of the hill, the view changed back to Flagstaff.  The weather is beautiful and the views have been fantastic today. 

I stopped to have a look at the Dalmore Reserve which has been turned into a community vegetable garden.  The garden is a little overgrown after the winter but it does have great views of the city.

One of the more sad things that I have walked past during my challenge of walking every street in Dunedin is this wooden seat which has a fantastic view of the city.  The seat is dedicated to baby Mae. 

Today I walked past three interesting letterboxes.  One is an ordinary letterbox that is painted like a house while another has used a large piece of interesting wood to cleverly create a letterbox and the third letterbox has been decorated with mosaic tiles.

 

 

The ultimate in recycling is this used chain to make the house number on the fence.

The Pine Hill bus stop has been beautifully painted with scenes of the early Pine Hill School. The scenes are taken from old photographs of the school and have been faithfully replicated in the bus stop.

 

Distance walked:  11.2  km         Walking time  2 hr 10 mins  

 

Total distance: 653.0 km        Total walking  121 hr 52 mins 

Day Seventy Nine Pine Hill

New Zealand is in Lockdown  Alert Level 4 which is our highest level of restrictions due to an outbreak of Covid 19 in the community. It means that I am only allowed to exercise locally.  I have not walked the streets close to home as I had thought if NZ was to go into Lockdown, then I would be able to continue my walking the streets of Dunedin.  Today I walked 3 streets

983. Pine Hill Road
984. Maxwellton Street
985. Patmos Avenue

I started my walk by walking up the hill towards Mt Cargill from my home.  It only takes about 10 minutes walking to reach farmland and the views of the city really start to open up. It was a good feeling looking at this view knowing that I have walked every street that I could see. 

As I walked around the hill  I was rewarded with a view of Pine Hill which is where I live.  I still need to walk these streets but with Lockdown, these will be the next streets that I will be walking. 

 As I started walking down the hill to Leith Valley I crossed over a bridge that goes over the Northern Motorway.  This is State Highway One and is the main road to get into the city from the North.  Normally this is a very busy road but as we are in Lockdown and the only travel allowed is for essential services (e.g. food and medicine) there was very little traffic. 

On my walk I caught a glimpse of the magnificent house built by Dunedin's first bishop.  This house is huge and was built in the 1880's by the the first Bishop of Dunedin who lived here for 50 years and raised a family of five children.

At the entrance to the property once owned by the first Bishop is the gatehouse which is, itself, a beautiful home.  The gatehouse is much smaller that the main house.

Spring is definitely in the air and it was wonderful to walk past these trees covered in beautiful blossom.  I have walked past these trees before back in April when they were losing their leaves.  

 

And finally I walked back up the hill towards home by walking up Pine Hill Road, and over the bridge over George Street which is the main street of Dunedin.  As it is Lockdown, the streets are very quiet with no traffic today. 

It might seem a strange photo but this fence is a new fence, only a few weeks old,  that replaced a very old fence that ran up the side of the road.  This is a much nicer and safer fence.  

 

Looking over the side of the fence part, I could see that road has been built up with most of the road not actually on the ground but suspended on a bridge. 

On my walk today I walked past a number of these traps which are part of the Halo Project.  The Halo Project maintains a number of predator traps to protect the native wildlife.  There are a variety of traps for possum, stoats and rats around the fringes of the city that are regularly checked by volunteers

To show that half my walk was past farmland on the edge of the city, here are some of the farm animals that I walked past today.

I walked past this lovely stone fence built from the stones that the farmer cleared from his paddocks.  This is a very old style way of making a fence but this fence is only a few years old.

I walked past these two letterboxes.  One is painted with a kereru (NZ wood pigeon) and the other is shaped like a man going walkabout.

Lastly is this painted telephone cabinet that I walked past today. 

Distance walked:  10.4  km         Walking time  1 hr 55 mins  

 

Total distance: 641.8 km        Total walking  119 hr 42 mins 

Day Sixty Seven Wharf

 Today I completed the streets behind the railway station, around the wharf where I had been walking a couple of days ago.  I walked 5 streets.

830. Ward Street

831. Ward Street Overbridge
832. Halsey Street
833. Bauchop Street
834. Sturdee Street
835. Wickliffe Street

From the wharf area, there are good views of the city skyline with Flagstaff behind the city and the ridge leading to Mount Cargill.  

The area around the wharf is flat and industrial businesses and warehouses.  The part that I walked today was nearer the wharf where the large ships dock.  I walked past the logging port with all the logs stacked up like tooth picks.  

And I walked past the Ward Street Power Substation.  This was the second substation built in Dunedin in 1938 and the historic building has been preserved as an example of art deco industrial architecture.  The substation was replaced in 2010 with  modern, larger capacity equipment making the building obsolete.

While the substation no longer houses the power equipment, it has been preserved with a series of interpretive panels inside, describing the history and workings.  As the building remains inside the live, high voltage grounds of the substation, it is cannot be opened to the public. 

Today I walked past two very nice pieces of public art.  On the building wall opposite the inter-city bus depot is the this large scale map of Dunedin.  

And just along the road is this equally impressive mural with a girl over the harbour reaching out to the sea gulls and kereru.

Distance walked:  4.5  km         Walking time   48 mins  

 

Total distance: 538.4 km       Total walking  101 hr 02 mins 

Day Fifty Six Warehouse Precinct

I thought it best to walk the streets close to State Highway One when the roads were quiet so I was out walking early on Sunday morning.  I walked 12 streets.

694. Queens Gardens
695. Anzac Square
696. Water Street
697. Jetty Street
698. Police Street
699. Jervois Street
700. Wolseley Street
701. Gordon Street
702. Vogel Street
703. Crawford Street
704. Bond Street

705. Rattray Street

My apologies if this blog post is a bit long, I walked past so much of Dunedin's history today that I just had to try and share some of it.  

 

After walking in the suburbs yesterday, today I didn't see many views but the one view of note today is this view with the trees on the hill being the start of the Town Belt

I walked around the Queens Gardens which divides the two one way systems.  Queens Gardens was originally named Victoria Gardens in 1904 after Queen Victoria but it wasn't long before the name Queens Gardens was adopted. There is a monument of Queen Victoria in the gardens.

 

In the centre of the Queens Gardens is the Cenotaph which commemorates the Dunedin members of the armed forces who died in the first and second world wars.  The foundation stone of the Cenotaph was laid in 1924 and each year tens of thousands of people attend a dawn service here on Anzac Day, 25 April.  

 

 On the edge of the Queens Gardens is this Celtic Cross symbolising the city's first European settlers and built in 2000 to remind future generations of the arrival of the first Christian settlers. 

 

I finished walking Rattray Street today, a street that I had started a while ago.  Rattray Street took me to the Exhange which was the financial heart of Dunedin.  In the Exchange is the Cargill Monument, erected in 1872 that commemorates William Cargill, who was the leader of Free Church migration to Otago and the first superintendent of the region.  It was a versatile monument as it had a gas lamp, drinking fountain and viewing platform.  Today there is no gas lamp and the fountain does not work but the viewing platform is still there. 

I walked past a painted telephone cabinet today which shows the Cargill Monument in the exchange inf 1930. Other sides of the cabinet show more pictures of early Dunedin.

Also in the Exchange are three bronze penguins that stand about 60cm high.  The penguins were donated in 1990 as public art.  

On Cumberland Street, I walked past Toitu Otago Settlers Museum.  Founded in 1898, 50 years after the first settlers arrived in Dunedin and originally called the Otago Early Settlers Museum it's main purpose was to preserve the region's early Maori history and the first gold rush history from the 1860's.  Eventually the word 'early' was dropped and it's scope widened to incorporate all era's of history for Dunedin and Otago.   Over the years the building that houses the Settlers Museum has grown, the latest part being built in 2012 and is shaped like the bow of a boat, to represent the sailing ships of the first settlers. 

The newer part of Toitu is joined to the original building.  This part of the building is home to portraits of the settlers who arrived on the first boats to Dunedin.  There is no charge to enter Toitu and it is well worth a visit around all the galleries.

In 1994, the Early Settlers Museum was joined to the old bus station that was vacant next door.  The art deco bus station was built in 1939 and now houses the transport part of the Toitu museum. 

 

Between Toitu and the Railway Station is the steam locomotive JA1274.  This is the last steam locomotive to have been built by the NZ Railway Hillside workshop in Dunedin so it seems fitting that it is still here in Dunedin.  JA1274 was built in 1956 and has been displayed at the Early Settlers Museum since 1975.  While the locomotive is no longer operational it is in very good condition and just needs the firebox re-bricked and the boiler checked and one day, it may possibly run the rails again.

Today I noticed these roses planed near the entrance to Toitu and of even more interest is the plaque nearby that explains that the roses are a cutting from the original plant that was bought from Esher, England in 1848 on John Wickliffe which is the first sailing ship to arrive in Dunedin.

 My walk today took in so many historical buildings of the city and one of the is the Otago Daily Times or ODT.  The ODT is  New Zealand's oldest surviving daily newspaper with the first newspaper rolling off the press in 1861. 

For many years Dunedin was home to the chocolate factory Cadbury.  Dating back to 1868 when Richard Hudson arrived in Dunedin and started a bakehouse making biscuits and in 1884 he opened the Southern Hemisphere's first chocolate factory. Often there was the smell of chocolate in the air surrounding the factory until it's closure in 2018. The Cadbury factory is currently being demolished to make way for the new Dunedin Hospital.   This photo shows the original Cadbury building and the purple silo was the one used for the chocolate waterfall that was part of the Cadbury factory tour.

Part of my walk today took me back past the Railway Station as I walked circumnavigated Anzac square.  I know I put a picture of the railway station on my blog a couple of days ago but the railway station really is impressive and it is easy to see why it is the most photographed building in New Zealand.  

 

The garden area outside the Railway Station is known as ANZAC square, named after the Australian and New Zealand Army Corp  and is a remembrance for the soldiers who served in the 1914-1918 war.

 

In the late 1800's and early 1900's railway was the main form of transportation for people and goods, the goods yard and track covered a large area of land.  One way to cross this area was by a bridge that was built in 1883 and it was in use up until 1977 when it was replaced with the new Jetty Street overbridge.  This old bridge was significant in two ways - one is that it was the first bridge to use commercially produced New Zealand steel with steel that was made in Green Island, and the second is the length of the bridge being 196 metres. This is what the rail yard and the bridge that crossed it looked like.

 And this is the 'new' Jetty Street bridge that was built in 1977 to replace the old railway overbridge. It is much larger and higher with on and off ramps.  Note there is not much traffic but that is because I was walking early on a Sunday morning. 

 

The old bridge is gone but the stone abutments remain.  The stone abutments are nondescript and show nothing of their history.  I have often passed here in a car and have not really taken any notice of them. It was not until I walked past that I stopped to investigate.

 

 

Attempts have been made to 'beautify' the Jetty Street overbridge with the abutment decorated with a hanging garden and made to represent an old ship.  Again this is something that I would not have seen had it not been for my challenge to walk every street. 

 

 

Another place of interest that I walked past today is Lan Yuan Dunedin Chinese Garden.  This is the only authentic Chinese Garden in New Zealand and is only one of three outside China.  It was built by workers who came from Shanghai specifically to build the gardens.  The garden was opened in 2008

 

During my walk today I learnt that Dunedin was home to New Zealand's first skyscraper.  The New Zealand Express Company building, now known as Consultancy House is the concrete building in right of this photo.  It is seven stories and was built in 1908.  It is also the first building in New Zealand to use pre-cast concrete slabs constructed off-site.  This photo shows how much taller it is than it's neighbours of the same era. 

 I am often surprised at what I see while walking and today I walked over the stone that marks the spot where the John Wickliffe bringing the first settlers to Dunedin landed.  Today this stone is a long way from the harbour area but in the 1800's it was part of the foreshore, hence the surrounding street names of Water Street, Wharf Street and Jetty Street.

This is the view from the first landing site and all the land that the buildings are on came from Bell Hill and where First Church is now standing.  Bell Hill divided the city in two and in the 1870's it was removed and the fill was used to reclaim a lot of the land that you can now see.  Without this reclaimed land, Dunedin would be a very different looking city.

The Warehouse Precinct is one of the older parts of the city and as a result there are many lovely, old restored buildings. Most of these buildings have been built on land that has been reclaimed from the removal of Bell Hill.

And finally I will show some of the street art that I walked past today. I have walked past much street art in the central city over the last couple of weeks and it is great to see blank, unremarkable walls transformed into works of art.  An added benefit of the art is that it removes and keeps away unsightly graffiti.

Distance walked:  8.9 km      Walking time   1 hr 34 mins    

Total distance: 444.7 km       Total walking  83 hr 40 mins