This is a full mission with all the elements of a good Sunday Drive locked and loaded. A beautiful Dunedin afternoon? Check. A mysterious yet scenic location? Aw yeah. Full carload of mission crew? A double plus. Amanda and I are joined by two gorgeous co-stars – the first Jane from the Sci Comm department (you may remember her from such previous bloggings as Murdering Beach). Lovely soul that she is, Jane has gone all-out with provisions for the trip – not only wine and chocolate, but a thermos of coffee as well. Champion!
Me? I brought a dog – internet, meet Seven :
Yip, she’s a cutie. Seven actually belongs to my cousin Paul, but he’s at work and I haven’t got the heart to leave her at home in her pen. It proves to be a popular move – Jane and Amanda are instantly smitten and Seven, who can never get enough attention or lick enough faces, is ecstatic. But little did we know the cute animal encounters were only just beginning…
So where are we actually going? Well – it’s a doozy. We’re headed to the tip of the Otago Peninsular, to a secret spot known mainly by the keen fishermen and taggers of Dunedin – The Bunkers. Derelict WW2 gun emplacements, deserted, neglected and covered in crazy graffiti and situated in one of the most gorgeous spots anywhere along the harbour. But more about them later – first we have to get there.
There are two ways to travel the scenic marvel that is Otago Peninsular. Most people take the harbour road, which snakes along the edge of the water and passes through all the major settlements. That’s a Sunday Drive in itself, but it tends to get a little congested at the end of the day. Never one to follow the crowd, I decided to take the lesser-traveled Highcliff Road, which passes right along the spine of the Peninsular and on a sunny afternoon you get views like this :
There’s one particularly good spot to pull over on Highcliff Road, right next to the most photographed Cabbage Tree in New Zealand – this is the classic shot of Otago Harbour, seen on many a postcard :
And that’s where we met Shawn. There may be no more pitiful sound in the world than a new-born lamb that’s lost it’s mother. From out of nowhere came a nervous bleat, and there in the corner of the paddock was a shaky-legged lamb, young enough that it’s umbilical chord was still attached.
It’s effect on the girls was instantaneous – they swarmed the orphan lamb in a tidal wave of maternal instincts and concerned girly noises. There was no mother in sight, and the poor little guy was scared witless. He stuck his woolly head through the fence and looked sadly at us. I knew what was coming. “We have to help him!” “He’s all alone and scared!” “We can’t leave him behind!”. This was a full-scale cute baby animal emergency! I could see Jane was eyeing up the car and mentally calculating how much room was in the backseat. She was on the verge of tears with the sheer cuteness of it all, and seemed ready to legally adopt Shawn at a moment’s notice.
Both of them look pleadingly at me, but there’s no way it’s going to work, especially with the dog in the car as well. We finally agree to keep going on the mission to The Bunkers, but with the promise that we’ll call in on the way back and if Shawn was still there alone we’d do something about it (I’m not exactly sure what our emergency rescue plan was going to be – presumably calling 111 or shooting up some flares or something.)
So it was back on the High Road, through Portobello and right out as far as you can drive to the end of the Peninsular (almost). The spot is called Harrington Point, and most people drive right past and have no idea what’s there. Access is from the top of the hill just before Taiaroa Head and the Albatross Colony. There’s a bay on the side of the road where you can park, and it’s easy to see the track going down from the top of the hill. But first you might want to take in the view…
The reason this is such a good vantage point to see the harbour is the same reason they built gun emplacements here in World War 2 – it’s right at the absolutely narrowest part of the harbour mouth – right where they thought an invading Japanese war fleet would pass. …
