Day 85: Leaving Queenstown, Oamaru

The beginning of an end, so to speak.  We left Queenstown, and started our two day trek to Christchurch, where we will fly to Australia from.  Along the way, a drive across the middle of the South Island.  It is a sunny, sunny place, much like the Eastern slope of the Rockies and Cascades in the States.  (Lots of irrigation in a place that would otherwise be a desert).

Along the way, many many road side vegetable and fruit stands made larger than necessary to attract a critical customer:  The Asian Tourist.  This particular one had rose gardens:

And random, naked lady statuary.

The next town had overly large constructed fruits:

You do you, Cromwell.

And eventually, we reached Oamaru.  Oamaru is a lot more quaint and attractive than you would assume, and a lot of that had to do with the elaborately carved detail work on the white, limestone buildings that make up most of the core of the town.

The town is close to a very rich vein of Oamaru Stone, and so in the late Victorian age, when the town first bloomed, much of the buildings were made from it.

This sign is from a stoneworker who still does some carving of the stone, mainly of smaller pieces for tourists.

But you can see how the buildings have a charm lacking in most other towns in New Zealand.

Unfortunately, the ice cream store where this cart was located wasn't open at the time for us to test the theory.

Oamaru is also home to a thriving steam punk scene, museum, and various parades throughout the year.  The officialish symbol of the town is, in fact, a penny-farthing (the big wheel in front style of bicycle.)

We even found this, as far as I could tell operational, steam-punked out penny-double farthing, using a tracker tire as the front wheel.  It was a bit rusty and locked up, but all the parts seemed like they would work with a little TLC.

A theme we ran into several times before, and since, in New Zealand.  The play grounds are always pretty awesome.  I think Molly got some better pictures, but this one had a publicly accessible gas grill ($2 gets you 25 minutes of heat), an honest-to-God human sized hamster wheel (the round tube just to the left of the arrow shaped building), and a slide that started at least 20 feet up.  There's also an old school playground merry-go-round on the left side of the frame.

This being the coast of New Zealand, the surf was pretty intense.  The Marina was protected by some pretty intense breakwaters, including this one made of giant cement caltrops.  

And enourmous granite and limestone boulders.

And seals.  They added those in for good measure.

Oamaru is also famous for being a nesting ground for various types of penguins, but due to tourists and locals upsetting the beaches, and the penguins diminishing in numbers, and also the need for revenue for the town, you now have to pay to watch them come in to the beach in the evening to nest.  I passed.

Tomorrow, on to Christchurch.