Oamaru

After breakfast at Dunedin holiday park, we drove 1.5 hr north to Oamaru for its beautiful colonial architecture and interesting stores, such as a bookstore with a full size movie duplicate of the boat cross Antartica in 1914-1917, an art gallery all about eyes, an antique motored bicycle, etc. We also had fun at the beach front kid playground. 

 

 Oamaru were sheep farms in the 1800's, then it's natural harbour facilitated trade with Buildings sprung up - banks, grain stores, post offices and a court house built from limestone (referred to by New Zealanders as Oamaru Stone because it is sourced locally and used all over the country). 

Our next stop was the Moeraki Boulders, a group of very large spherical “stones” on Koekohe Beach near Moeraki on New Zealand’s Otago coast. These boulders are actually concretions that have been exposed through shoreline erosion. I got three new sandfly bites here. 

Dunedin Botanical Gardens of 123 acres were in our way back to town, a good place for hours of stroll. Has an aviary along with many themed garden areas such as Rhododendron, Azalea and Rose Gardens, but we ran out of time. 

Our last stop of the day was Baldwin Street in Dunedin, the steepest street in the world. We skipped the  ten minutes 350 metres walk but drove up. Quite a busy day.