Thursday - Reservoirs and Rhododendrons

After a furious Wednesday night's blogging to get up to date with the quarter finals weekend, we rose to a beautiful, sunny morning. 

The old earth dam and valve

The newer dam, just downstream

With nothing planned, we started the day with a brisk walk around Ross Creek Reservoir.  This is in a lovely little valley in the northwest of Dunedin, about five minutes drive from the city centre.  The original dam and valve that supplied water to Dunedin from 1867 are still working (and it's now an engineering heritage site). 

Exhibitionist sexual display by plant

We went for a walk in the podocarp forest round the reservoir and met the usual contingent of walking, running and cycling locals.  After a pleasant hour or so, we headed back to town.  Fi was in the mood for photographing rhododendrons at the Botanic Garden, and that is not, in my opinion, a spectator sport.  So I went on a quest to find an Australian or Wallabies flag to wave around at Pirates on Sunday night.

More blatant exhibitionism

Alas, Fi had far more luck hunting rhododendrons than I did finding an Australian flag.  The motto for RWC in Dunedin seems to be 48 matches, 20 countries, and 19 flags on sale.  I could buy Namibian, Tongan, Russian, and Georgian flags but nary an Australian flag to be seen.

To console myself, I arrived early at the Albar (rapidly becoming our favourite pub over here) and discovered that they had a new beer on tap, and the tap had a warning label on it!  As with most mature, risk-averse, sensible adult men, the first thing I thought was "Warning label on beer - I MUST try that."

So I did.  It was an IPA (India Pale Ale for the un-beer-initiated) from Marlborough from Renaissance Brewing Company.  It is 8.5% (hence the warning label) and is currently THE BEST BEER IN THE WORLD in my opinion (rubbish, it's Emerson's Southern Clam Stout says Fi).  While sipping this masterpiece of brewing, I had a great chat with Stuart the Landlord of the Albar.  As usual, the topics included beer, rugby, beer, rugby, whiskey and rugby.  Fi finally arrived from the Botanic Garden via Meenans - the local whiskey importer and, apparently, a brewer as well.  We haven't tried any of their beer, but we will before we leave Dunedin.

As sunny days are rare (or so we've found), we headed home to hang out the washing and then nipped down to view the NZ Rock and Mineral Society National Show at the Forbury Racecourse (they get all the good things).  This turned out to be mostly mineral specimens and polished rocks.  No one seemed interested in our idea for a T-shirt motto for the show "Lapidarists will polish anyone's rocks" so we had a quick coffee at Starfish and headed home. And this was the view from the hill at four o'clock that day.

View from the Hill on a sunny day