Drinking in Dunedin

Dunedin welcomed us with open arms. With a free campsite right by the town centre, albeit a carpark, it had portaloos and a sink with drinking water. If we chose to leave Gladys there for the day it only cost $5, bargain!

We stayed in Dunedin for 3 nights (the maximum amount of nights you are allowed to stay at that campsite). We enjoyed doing a Speight’s Brewery Tour, which for only $30 each we got a really insightful tour of the brewery plus open taps for the last 30/40 minutes! We definitely made sure to drink our $30 worth! Steven ran our tour and he did a great job of telling us the story behind Speight’s and how these three men, William Dawson from Aberdeen, Charles Greenslade from Devon and James Speight from Yorkshire brought Speight’s beer to life. The reason it was named Speights is because

one night in a drunken fashion, James managed to convince William and Charles to pay $200 each whilst he paid $100 for the brewery, and got to have his surname as the famous Kiwi beer, how this occurred no one quite knows, but it sounds like James was a sweet talker! We got to experience the tour the same way a beer is made, from the top to the bottom, passing Steven’s favourite level where there is a staff bar that they can drink at for free (obviously once they’ve finished work!!). At the end we got to try lots of different beers, some of which are only available at that brewery. If you are ever in Dunedin, it is definitely worth a visit!

During our stay we also went to the Otago Settlers Museum, taking us 3 hours to go around, but we still didn’t see it all! It was really insightful telling us all about how the Scottish came over around the mid 1800’s and converted Dunedin to the town it is today. It is known as the Southern Edinburgh because of the way they mapped it out. Settlers coming over had to buy their land before they arrived and all the streets were similarly named as they are in Edinburgh so they chose that way, however when they arrived they were not prepared for how hilly Dunedin is! The museum had artefacts from all around this time, from the whalers to the fashion, the technology advancements to the first fire brigade (springing from the gold rush when so many people arrived and houses had to be built quickly with timber, thus resulting in many fires). It really is an amazing museum, so don’t miss it if ever you go!

The other museum we went to was the Otago Museum, mainly for the Science side! We were like little kids going around all the interactive elements (see what I did there!) and learning all things science-y! We built mountains for rivers to glide through, a paper twizzle to go over an air vent, plus there was a really big curvy slide! So much fun!! Then we ventured through to the butterfly park, which was just magnificent. Hundreds of butterflies all around, so many different colours, some would even come and land on you. There were a few tarantulas as well, luckily behind glass because they gave us the heebie-jeebies!!

Overall, Dunedin is a great place to go, with plenty of free things to enjoy such as the Settlers museum and parts of the Otago museum. There is also the art walk which takes about 90 minutes and takes you to all the street art around the city. Plus there are plenty of Op shops (charity shops), always good fun to go around! And then of course, there is the night life. Plenty of bars, restaurants and live music, especially in the Octagon centre. There was one bar we went to which even had hand pumped beer, so it was just like being back at home in England, enjoying a room temperature beer!