Giveaways
Revised 22 November 2021.
THIS HAS NOW BEEN REPLACED WITH AN UPDATED 'CITY OF MUSEUMS' PUBLISHED ON 16 FEBRUARY 2024.
I DECIDED to drive to Invercargill, the nearest large city to Queenstown and the southernmost city in New Zealand, known as ‘Invers’ to the locals, to get some bits and pieces for my car. I also wanted to do some shopping for good sandals and get a pedicure for my bunioned feet, as Queenstown is notoriously expensive for that sort of thing.
I set off on the 18th of January, which is high summer here. The day was gloriously warm. But the next two days became wrap-up days, as they often are at the south end of New Zealand even in summer.
Up to now, Invercargill has been overshadowed by flashier and more adventuresome tourist destinations like Queenstown, famous for things like bungy-jumping and skiing as well as the undoubted charms of Lake Wakatipu.
But Queenstown seems to be full up, and overpriced. Many backpackers and freedom campers are also being driven out of Queenstown and its restrictive environs.
The fortunes of old-fashioned and off-the-beaten-track places like Invercargill often improve when people get tired of the Queenstowns of this world, and go looking for a more relaxing sort of holiday.
Invercargill might not do bungy jumping and skiing, but it’s still the gateway to the wilderness of southern Fiordland where the Hump Ridge Track is located; the coastal wilderness of the Catlins east of the city; the lengthy beaches of 26-km long Oreti Beach where Burt Munro used to race ‘The World’s Fastest Indian’ and the similarly lengthy beaches of Te Waewae Bayand Toetoes Bay; the town of Bluff (most southerly on the New Zealand mainland); Slope Point, the southernmost point on the South Island; and Stewart Island/Rakiura further to the south, a large island that is now one of a handful of international Dark Sky Sanctuaries.
My search for second-hand items led to a place called Demolition World, run by a woman named Leigh. It was a re-created town made up of bric-a-brac from the colonial era to the 1960s, stuff that Leigh saved while onselling more valuable recycling materials, timber mostly.
One of the old signs outside the front entrance promised panel-beating services, so I thought it must be an auto junk yard. It turned out that it was just a sign and that Leigh was a sign collector.
I was so astounded. Demolition World has 50 shops which recreate the past, a church where people are getting married in the old style; a bar with old style bottled beer; a ‘dairy’ (NZ expression) or corner shop from the fifties with 1950s containers for the products; a circus; a shop with old toys; a blacksmith’s shop; a railway station; and old horse-cart; and an old medical centre. It’s a work of art.
Leigh, who has seven children, doesn’t charge other than a ‘gold coin’ donation (meaning $1 or $2, not real gold).
Demolition World is just one of the many places in Invercargill that are dedicated to the past in some way, even as the city continues to change.
For instance, Bert Munro's actual racing motorbike resides in the E. Hayes and Sons Hardware Store, along with the rest of the E. Hayes Motorworks Collection. Imagine that, a hardware store doubling as a museum!
There’s also Transport World, an absolutely world-class double transport museum founded by the late H W [Bill] Richardson, a prominent Invercargill trucking company proprietor and obviously passionate enthusiast for anything that ran on rubber; one of those people who had Diesel for blood, as you might say. Bill Richardson’s company now has the more corporate-sounding name of HWR and has, indeed, since diversified into real estate. More on that later.
There are two individual museums on the Transport World site, Bill Richardson Transport World, which bills itself as “the largest private automotive museum of its type in the world,” and Classic Motorcycle Mecca, which claims to be “Australasia’s premiere motorcycle museum.” To call something Mecca might not be regarded as too woke in a more cosmopolitan sort of a city — one or two Auckland cafes had to drop that name — but then again Invercargill really is a wind-your-watch-back-thirty-years sort of a place.
Which raises an interesting point. Invercargill has started to change in recent years.
Tourism is on the up and up in Invercargill, partly because it is the gateway to the Catlins. And Airbnb is catching on too, though it’s not yet expensive. I got a palace for only NZ $30, or about US $20. This is a lot cheaper and better than staying at a backpackers.
Both the Invercargill Art Gallery,and The Southland Museum and Art Gallery, have been closed due to earthquake risk. For the time being, the exhibits of both have been transferred toa transitional museum and art gallery called He Waka Tuia at 42 Kelvin Street, in the city's western suburbs.
There is a link to all the official museums of Invercargill here. These do not include Transport World or the E. Hayes collection, but they do including the Awarua Communications Museum, the Bluff Maritime Museum, the Southland Fire Museum and the Thorbury Vuntage Tractor and Implement Museum.
The Invercargill Water Tower, which dates all the way back to the 1880s, is also well worth a visit.
I also went to Teretonga Park, the home of (non-beach) motor racing in invercargill and its surrounding region of Southland. This region has the equally apt name of Murihiku in Māori, meaning 'last joint of the tail'.
Another thing you can do, due to the proximity of the South Magnetic Pole to New Zealand, is to observe the aurora australis, the southern lights. There is a good page on how to do that on the Southland/Murihiku tourism website, southlandnz.com.
On Saturday the 19th, I was getting my pedicure and shopping for some other things, including new sandals.
I also managed to make enough time to get to Invercargill's fabulous Queens Park, where I caught up with about 100 runners from a club called Invercargill Parkrun. This seems to be an arrangement whereby busy people work towards a competitive race around the park once a month. I met a woman who was a marshal, guiding the direction of the run.
We spoke for 20 minutes. Her name was Marie and I found that I had met her socially eight years before, a friend of a friend. Her husband Ant was also a Facebook friend of mine, as it turned out. We ended up going to the park’s gilt-edged-service café, the Cheeky Llama, and talking more about the redevelopment scheme and other things.
Invercargill also has a lot of beautiful old buildings and parklands, which I’ve already written about in an earlier post.
The large, classy Queens Park joins on to a so-called Town Belt of parkland that encompasses the inner city. The Town Belt is shaped like a trident with Otepuni Gardens, through which flows the Otepuni Stream, as the middle prong. The downtown area is thus divided up into two precincts in an arrangement very similar to the Adelaide Park Lands, except that in the case of Invercargill, the railway yards and the industrial district of West Invercargill (probably still a swamp in the 1800s) form the western side of the downtown precinct.
Such encompassing parklands were a common thing in colonial New Zealand and in some towns and cities in Australia too, such as Adelaide.
Here’s a more detailed aerial photo of a part of the central area, followed by a historical photo and some photos of my own taken inside areas highlighted with yellow ellipses. You can see the Otepuni Gardens and stream in this aerial photo, as well.
All in all, old colonial cities like Invercargill (and Adelaide) often have a lot of character and public amenity, and need to be kept that way.
In spite of the usual reverence for the past, the danger from earthquakes and the cost of refurbishment has ed to the demolition of almost the whole of Invercargill’s oldest and most historic city block, between Tay, Dee, Esk and Kelvin Streets, across the way from the Crescent and the South African War Memorial.
Here’s a video of me walking around the area and looking at the frontages. The buildings across the road that I wonder about at the end, are safe. The buildings that were due to be demolished have since been demolished as of mid-2020, so this is a historical record.
I’ve got more to say about all that in another post called ‘From Heritage, to Glass and Girders?’
Then, finally, I went off to Bluff to climb the Bluff Hill and take some more photos. Though isolated and remote even by New Zealand standards, and completely at the wrong end of the country as far as the rest of the world is concerned, Bluff is nevertheless a surprisingly important port. Part of the reason for this is that it serves the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter, a plant that uses cheap, possibly undervalued, hydroelectric power to smelt some of the world’s purest aluminium. Tiwai Point was commissioned in 1971. I think in those days the politicians had a vision of New Zealand as the Sweden or Switzerland of the South Pacific, making expensive added-value products such as racing bike components out of the aluminium. But these days, 90% of it is exported as ingots.
Bluff Hill is officially Bluff Hill / Motupōhue, the island of vines. It isn’t quite an island, as you can see.
There’s a link to the walks on Bluff Hill here.
By the time I got to Bluff the January weather had turned into the opposite of summer, as it often does in these parts, which lie in the latitude of Patagonia and face south toward Antarctica.
A summer holiday in Bluff, latitude 46.6 degrees South
(The attractions of Bluff are a bit like Britain’s famous ‘Skegness is so bracing’ tourist poster, which makes the best of a place that can’t exactly claim to be the Riviera. So it is for Bluff and Southland/Murihiku in general, even though this part of the country has stunning beaches that would attract millions if only they were in a balmier location.)
Here I am beside a famous sign.
There’s an old gun emplacement on the hill, created just in case anyone ever tried to attack the most southerly major port in the British Empire (they didn’t).
There’s also some significant Māori culture on the island of vines. Although South Island Māori faced a harsher environment and were fewer in number than in the North Island, this area is known for its fat juvenile seabirds, known as tītī or muttonbirds, which would be regularly harvested and preserved and thus helped to sustain human life.
Finally, this is me trying to narrate a video about the view down to the town of Bluff and the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter.
Bluff Hill / Motupōhue with wind noise!
But do come to Bluff — it’s so bracing!
All maps in this post have north at top
If you liked the post above, check out my new book about the South Island! It's available for purchase from this website, a-maverick.com.
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