Monday morning. We were ready to set sail but the ship was not ready for us. Our ship, the Douglas Mawson, had docked early in the morning and disembarked her passengers. However, there were many things to do, like cleaning the cabins, before we could be allowed on board. The company that owns the ship, Aurora, put in place a program of activities for the day to keep us distracted. This began with telling us to go away and come back to the hotel at lunchtime.
We wandered down to the Chinese Gardens. For a modest fee you can wander around this small, tranquil garden. It backs onto the railway track and is surrounded by city buildings. High walls keep most of this urban pressure out and a lovely pond area draws your attention inward. Were I stuck in Dunedin again, I don’t think I would go out of my way to visit these gardens but we had a couple of hours to kill so it was fine.
Back at the hotel we joined a group for an hour’s walking tour. This was all about the street art. Dunedin has a bit of a reputation for painted walls. There is some graffiti but most of the paintings have been commissioned by the city. Some of the pieces, up to a decade old, are getting a bit tatty around the edges now. Our guide was very enthusiastic about the plethora of murals we were shown. I didn’t share his engagement but it did pass another hour.
Next up was a bus ride. We all piled into a coach and were driven around the outskirts of Dunedin. Eventually we rocked up at the ineffably famous Baldwin Street. This road is officially recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s steepest residential street. 19°, 35% or 1:2.78 depending on how you like to measure these things. It is 350 m long and, apart from being steep, is very ordinary. I declined the invitation to walk to one end of it. Instead, we stayed on the coach. As did many other people. We reflected that we had paid a lot of money for the Antarctic trip of a lifetime and were being shown a steep road.
Then came the Dunedin Botanic Garden. This at least gave us the chance to use a toilet. Baldwin Street may be famous but it is not sufficiently in the limelight as to have public toilets yet. At the botanic gardens, the toilets were broken, apart from one. Queuing passed some more time and then we had a comfortable stroll around the gardens. We found a winter garden, a heated Edwardian glass house, a rose garden and a herb garden. Eventually we found ourselves sitting by a duck pond seriously wondering if we should buy some duck food. Instead, we took a slow walk back to the coach and I ended up taking photographs of flowers, again.
The coach took us to a look-out point where a bust of Admiral Bird stares vacantly southward. From here we could see our ship. It was small and distant. There was a bit more driving around to show us something or other. I managed to doze through this part. Then we were finally taken to the ship. We had to queue outside to have our photograph taken. Then came passport control followed by registration. Finally, we were welcomed on board with a small sandwich and a glass of fruit juice.
Less than an hour later, we cast off. Dunedin is at the end of a long bay. It takes an hour or so to reach the entrance of the bay and open water. On the way, we did our obligatory emergency drills. I saw a cormorant on a sign post. We waved at some girls doing some rowing. I waved at a guy on a tanker as we passed the start of the deep-water channel but he remained enigmatic. The sun began to set. The pilot disembarked. An event always worth watching. We passed out of the sheltered bay and turned south towards Antarctica.
