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I am now gainfully employed. A look at my bank balance showed me I'm unlikely to make it another 5 months without working. Funny, that. So change of plans: I'll be staying in NZ longer, probably not spend much time at all in Australia, and then still get to spend 2-3 months in South East Asia.
But it is time for an update on my latest (and last, for the time being) travels. Milford Sound (which is not actually a Sound, but a Fjord, a misnomer that was partially rectified by naming the whole area, incorrectly spelt, Fiordlands) was mind-boggling in its scale. "See that little waterfall at the bottom of that mountain over there? That is the size of a fifty storey building." (Slight aside - apparently, according to Maori legend, sandflies were created by Hine-nui-te-po, the goddess of death, so that men entranced by the beauty of the Fiordlands would be reminded of their mortality. Sometimes legend trumps scientific explanation, I think.)
The next day, after a cold night sleeping in the car, I took the Souther Scenic to Invercargill, which wasn't all that scenic for the first couple of hours driving through fog, and to be honest after the sheer magnificence and grandeur of the Fiordlands, the area's perfectly endearing pastoral charms left me a little underwhelmed. The best thing I can say about Invercargill is that the internet in the library is free and not time limited, and that it was easy to open a bank account and apply for my tax number. That's not true, the museum was quite interesting and it has a nice park. But the city itself is a square grid aimed entirely at car traffic with no interesting architecture to speak of. Bluff had a cool little maritime museum, though, with an old boat you could climb into and take silly pictures (or maybe that's just me).
I took the direct route to Dunedin, arriving on a Friday night, which I thought would be a good time to get a feel for the so-called Edinburgh of the South. Except, not knowing anyone I wandered around the town centre a bit then headed for bed. The next day, however, I hit the Farmer's market held in the car park of "the most photographed building in NZ" (that's the train station), visited the excellent art gallery, attended a watercolour workshop, went on a tour of the Speight brewery and then went and hung out in a stranger's flat with kiwis who said "she'll be 'right" about five times before we even got there (thanks to my new friend from the above-mentioned workshop). Fun day.
After checking out The Steepest Street in the World, I drove around the Otago Peninsula and then bid farewell to NZ's Scottish city, to start heading towards its "most English city". On the way I spent a day in Oamaru, which hosts beautiful victorian white stone buildings and the last of New Zealand's whisky. This tragic story involves a large brewery buying the country's only distillery purely for its water supply and shutting down whisky production altogether. So in a few years, the existing supply shall run out and NZ single malt shall be no more. I'm not sure which is worst, that or the glaciers melting away.
Upon arrival in Christchurch, I quickly signed up for work in the field of Manufacturing and Logistics. No, I don't know what that entails yet. As there was to be no work over the Easter weekend, I thought I should make the most of my last few days of complete and utter freedom (just rubbing it in) and joined a large proportion of the Christchurch population in the outdoors activity and hot pools resort that is Hanmer Springs (although I did escape to Lewis Pass to climb a mountain).
And here we are. Hopefully the pictures to follow will tell their own story, mostly of stunning sights viewed in glorious weather I imagine. There's no pictures of Invercargill. Or Dunedin's train station, for that matter.
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Mark A CIRCUMSTANCE BEYOND OUR CONTROL, OH OH OH OH THE PHONE, THE TV AND THE NEWS OF THE WORLD GOT IN THE HOUSE LIKE A PIGEON FROM HELL, OH OH OH OH THREW SAND IN OUR EYES AND DESCENDED LIKE FLIES PUT US BACK ON THE TRAIN OH, BACK ON THE CHAIN GANG