At last a plan that came together. Our next house sit was in Queenstown. We’d missed out on a road trip to Christchurch but we found a way to get to Queenstown that meant we could take in some scenery, visit another city but not have an overtiring road journey. Instead we took a short flight to Dunedin, picked up a free car transfer for a couple of days and drove to Queenstown. How? Well, car rental companies charge a premium for one way travel because they don’t want all their vehicles ending up at one location, bad news if you want to move about using hire cars but good news if you happen to be traveling the opposite way to the norm, like we were, because the companies offer free use of the car to get it back ‘home’. There’s very little flexibility in dates and a finite time to do the transfer but if you can make it work, your journey is completely free, petrol included!
Our flight gave us fantastic aerial views over the Canterbury Plains and the East Coast of South Island. Yet another plus of the car transfer was that the pick up was from the airport so we saved a taxi ride as well.
Dunedin, as its name suggests, is a little bit Scottish, tartan everywhere and even lads in kilts . The Scottish settlers came in the late 1840’s and the name is, apparently, derived from the Gaelic for Edinburgh but its rise in importance as a provincial city is more due to the wealth in sheep farming followed by the discovery of gold in the region, than an attempt to emulate Scotland’s capital.
So what can you do with 24 hours – wandering around town looking at the buildings and architecture, enjoying the Toitu Otago Settlers Museum (any museum with a steam engine in the foyer scores a hit with me) and admiring the very grand railway station.
… Queenstown
Leaving the Islands 