Pine Hill

It is, perhaps, unfair to compare an AirBnB experience to that of a dorm room in a hostel. Even so, I could not have imagined the differences to have been more stark. A private room with cupboards, drawers, a queen-size bed and a sizeable wall-mounted television felt especially luxurious after top-bunking with a rotation of loathsome youth. The rest of the house was shared with only one fellow guest, a very pleasant and very sharp American-Danish woman of 84. The house itself was spacious and relaxed, with a neat garden and an attractive mountain view. Staying in was actually an option here. Perched atop Pine Hill, the place was a bit further afield than the admittedly well-situated hostel, but it was easy enough to stroll into town and there was a nearby bus for when that wasn't practicable. Before settling on a gentler path down Pine Hill Road to George Street, I tried a steep, twisting route suggested (through some algorithmic error) by Google Maps. Returning home this way was like walking up a corkscrew.

The Dunedin Botanic Gardens, which lay at the bottom of the hill near a small shopping strip, was an ever-pleasant stopover on my journeys into town. The topography and diverse selection of flora form handsome views that can be enjoyed from a range of vantage points, the steeper the better. I was partial to the native forest areas buried in the hills, despite getting thoroughly lost in them on my first encounter. They are reached via a flat open section that runs from the main entrance and provides many decent spots in which to enjoy minimum chips and polite drizzle.

The gardens lead into several streets of student accommodation, just outside Otago University. Most of the properties were identical two-storey Victorian townhouses in varying states of decay. On a sobering morning it's a wasteland of broken bottles, discarded plastic cups and weatherworn leather couches. I would push on to reach the grand stone buildings of the university proper. As with some of the historical buildings in town, there was restorative work going on during my stay, and the iconic clock tower was blotted out by scaffolding. I never ended up gatecrashing any lectures, but I did wonder if I was a convincing grey-haired student.

Breaking into Cargill's Castle

The house with the bay window is on a corner towards the steep end of Stuart Street. It appears largely unchanged, though there is no evidence of a rabbit infestation, and no snotty Prince Valiant-type lurking about. Warm from the walk and a bit shaken from the steepness, I cautiously traced the property's exterior, peering inside where I could. I wasn't quite up to knocking on the door and asking its perplexed residents if I could scope out their living area and reenact a music video from the '80s, though I did, on a later trip, stick my idiotic hand-drawn 'Architects of the New Dunedin Sound Wanted' flier in their letterbox. I stuck one over a plaque at the Octagon, too, and it remained there for a day or two. No bites.

The other part of the video, the part where the band and co. dance recklessly about a derelict building, was filmed at Cargill's Castle. Built at the behest of Edward Cargill, the son of Otago-colonising William Cargill and brother of Tunnel Beach-commissioning John, this cliffside castle and one-time cabaret joint is resolutely off limits. It stands abandoned on private property behind a dreary beachside housing development. There are no signs announcing its location and it does not exist in brochures and guides. Operating on limited information, I looped the Corstorphine bus route before an intervening driver showed me where to get off. Stepping from the bus in high fog, I made my way through tumbling streets to the nearest publicly accessible point. This turned out to be a grassy field between two houses. A sloping plain led down to the ocean, but its gradient required a clearer day to gauge. The castle, apparently somewhere to the left, was blocked off by a barbed wire fence with a stern warning sign. Through the fence I could see another field, with a stone fence at its far side and gnarled trees beyond that. I presumed the castle lay somewhere near those trees, but the fog made it impossible to tell for sure. I did not fancy my chances of scaling a barbed wire fence unscathed. Had I come all this way for a photo of a fence?

A photo of a fence.

I did the right thing first and knocked on the door of the adjoining property. There was no answer—the occupants must be elsewhere. My conscience satisfied, I snuck round the side and scoped out their backyard, looking for some sort of entrance that would lead on to the castle grounds. Though I had assumed that the nearest property would be my best option for access, it turned out that their territory only extended as far as the next field, meaning the castle itself lay on a neighbour's grounds—and it was not at all clear which one. Feeling at this point that further transgressions were beyond my mettle, I wandered back to the road, deflated, and began the return journey. As I passed the next house up, however, I noticed there was a private road into the property that curved in the direction of the castle. This looked promising. Seemingly no one about, I quickly stole my way along the path and found that it indeed led to the section behind the stone wall I had glimpsed earlier. From this vantage I could finally see the walls of the castle, though they lay behind another barbed wire fence with another stern sign, this time warning of multiple hazards.

I followed the fence until I was out of the view of any of the neighbouring houses, all the while looking for a way in. I fancied an overhanging tree might grant me access but its branches proved to be far too dense. Then I noticed that there was a small gap at the bottom of the fence. If the wire had sufficient give, it might just be possible to crawl underneath. Of course, I would still have to contend with those barbs. My backpack turned out to be an ideal solution. Using its bulk to prop up the wire, I created a space large enough to accommodate my horizontal form, while one of the bag's clips allowed me to safely pin back the lowest row of barbed wire. With this set-up it was surprisingly easy to slide under and reach the castle grounds.

It didn't take long to spot the promised hazards. These ranged from stray metal objects in the overgrown grass to collapsed floors and dangling detritus in the building itself. Keeping it from the public—at least in its current state—was a sensible move. The interior walls bore years of graffiti and there was evidence of smashed bottles on most of the floors. Some rooms were blocked off by gaping holes, so I had to climb through the large beachfront windows (seen accomodating silhouetted figures in the film clip) to cover the whole building. The fog-aided ambiance, slightly unsettling, slightly mysterious, justified every effort I had made to reach this point.

At the perimeter of the Zone.

Beaches

My first expedition to water was decidedly unspectacular. Going only by a blob of blue on a pamphlet I had picked up at the airport, I ventured over the over-bridge at the railway station and into some sort of industrial area on a day far too sunny for exposed urban landscapes. I cursed Dunedin's tourism board for not signposting this amazing hidden bay for the benefit of pedestrians as I continued on past drab factories and empty lots. T-shirt lightly moistened with sweat, I reached the location I had seen on the map and was disheartened to find the waterfront comprised solely of shipping yards and entirely fenced off to the public. Probably explains why none of the propaganda told me to go there. Still, nothing a bacon buttie can't fix.

My second attempt was Portobello, on the Otago Peninsula. I had hoped it would be a neat public transport-friendly hub from which I could independently trek to the must-see sites, such as Lovers' Leap (of 'Pink Frost' fame). Though it was indeed an easy and pleasant bus ride out, there were no walking paths that originated nearby, and the tiny town was hardly a destination in itself. Undeterred, I put my faith in Google Maps and set off up a road towards Sandymount, whatever that was, from which place Lovers' Leap was apparently accessible. It was another too-sunny day, with no sign of the fabled Long White Cloud, but the temperature was mild enough to convince me that the three-hour journey would be endurable. And, for a time, it was. I tramped up the steepening road with confidence, sticking mostly to narrow roadside ditches to avoid the occasional passing vehicle and making great time. But about a third of the way there I hit an incline that triggered my fear of heights. Not only did the road get even steeper, but the surrounding scenery appeared to fall away, suggesting nasty plummets on either side. It was around this point that I, history's greatest detective, realised that Sandymount was a mountain and that a road leading to it called Highcliff Road was not the best place for someone uncomfortable with heights to be. I returned to town for an average toasted sandwich and a suspiciously artificial-tasting banana milkshake before grabbing the next bus.

Port Chalmers, on the opposite shore, is not somewhere that inspires many words. The town is often described as 'quaint' and 'artsy', though the more accurate descriptor—if I may make an extremely superficial assessment—would be 'boring'. A short, unfriendly walk from the drabness of the shopping precinct takes you to the promisingly named Black Beach. Except it isn't a beach. A harbour, sure, but there was no beach-defining landmass between the water and the walkway, let alone a black one. It did, however, offer decent minimum chips for less than AU$2, for which I'm willing to forgive all.

The most successful trip—from a visual perspective, certainly—turned out to be to Tunnel Beach. Its name is derived from a tunnel carved through a cliff that leads down to a secluded beach, an extravagance commissioned by a 19th century politician so that his family could enjoy the seaside undisturbed. Or drown, as in the case of one of his daughters. This scene of hubris and horror made for a pleasant afternoon.

Empire in Ruins

To some degree my stay in Dunedin was a musical pilgrimage, albeit a fairly narrow one. This was the city which transformed a niche record label that by rights should have vanished in a puff of market reality into a going concern that exists to this day. Though Flying Nun was based in Christchurch at the time, its role in fostering what is referred to (sometimes contentiously) as the 'Dunedin Sound' remains its most enduring achievement. Of the many Dunedin acts that emerged as part of this movement, The Clean, The Chills and especially The Verlaines hold the most interest for me, and it was their footprints I endeavoured to follow. In many cases this meant poking about in places that have fallen into disrepair, or whose significance has been obscured by later development, necessitating some tame breaking-and-entering on my part. Some places, I was deflated to discover, simply don't exist anymore, such as the perfectly named record shop Records Records that acted as a hub for aspiring Dunedin musicians. Others, including the portion of the Otago Peninsula where The Chills' iconic 'Pink Frost' video was shot, were not accessible via public transport—and I wasn't willing to stump for expensive guided tours just to say I had been there.

Among the more significant landmarks is the Empire Tavern, an erstwhile live music venue sometimes referred to as Dunedin's Cavern. All the bands featured on the myth-making Dunedin Double EP—The Stones, The Chills, Sneaky Feelings and The Verlaines—were regulars of the Empire, the proprietors of which were unusually sympathetic to amateurs who performed their own material. Wandering up Princes Street from the Octagon, I was pleased to see that the building still existed, though it had developed a rather advanced case of scaffolding. A sign informed me that it was in the process of being restored and preserved as a historical building of architectural and cultural significance.

Through its open doorway, fenced off but easily accessible, I could see sawdust and grit and discarded tools on its carpeted hall and stairway, but no sign or sound of the handipeople tasked with the restoration. It was a Sunday, so it was reasonable to assume work was off for the day. Hesitantly I made my way inside and climbed the stairs to the historic first-floor bandroom. The room was as small as I had heard; it would not require a great deal of people to satisfy a young musician's ego. Presently it resembled a storage attic, but it was possible to picture what it may have been like in its heyday. One only hoped it did not smell quite so much like an upturned urinal back then.

Before I left, I did the only responsible thing: take idiotic self-portraits of myself on the stairs using the 10-second delay function on my camera. All in all it was worth the probable asbestos exposure.

Santa's last trip.